Albion Winegar Tourgée

“ So it was that, when Nimbus came to the officer in charge at Boyleston and begged that a teacher might be sent to Red Wing, and met the reply that because of the great demand they had none to send, Mollie Ainslie, hearing of the request, with her load of sorrow yet heavy on her lonely heart, said, "Here am I; take me." She thought it a holy work. It was, to her simple heart, a love-offering to the memory of him who had given his life to secure the freedom of the race she was asked to aid in lifting up. The gentle child felt called of God to do missionary work for a weak and struggling people. ”

“ It will be a long, sad time of waiting, which I fear our people will not endure as well as they did the tiresome waiting for freedom. I used to think that the law could give us our rights and make us free. I now see, more clearly than ever before, that we must not only make ourselves free, but must overcome all that prejudice which slavery created against our race in the hearts of the white people. ”

“ They did not believe that it was done for the sake of the slave, to secure his liberty or to establish his rights; but they believed most devoutly that it was done solely and purposely to injure the master, to punish the rebel, and to still further cripple and impoverish the South. It was, to them, an unwarrantable measure of unrighteous retribution inspired by the lowest and basest motives.
But if, to the mass of Southern white men, emancipation was a measure born of malicious spite in the breast of the North, what should they say of that which followed—the enfranchisement of the black? ”

“ Especially did this view seem natural, when it was remembered that wherever the township system had existed in any fullness or perfection, there slavery had withered and died without the scath of war; that wherever in all our bright land the township system had obtained a foothold and reached mature development, there intelligence and prosperity grew side by side; and that wherever this system had not prevailed, slavery had grown rank and luxuriant, ignorance had settled upon the people, and poverty had brought its gaunt hand to crush the spirit of free men and establish the dominion of class. ”

“ The masses of the Southern whites regarded the emancipation of the negro simply as an arbitrary exercise of power, intended as a punishment for the act of attempted secession—which act, while many believed it to have been impolitic, few believed to be in conflict with the true theory of our government. They considered the freeing of the slave merely a piece of wanton spite, inspired, in great measure, by sheer envy of Southern superiority, in part by angry hate because of the troubles, perils, and losses of the war, and, in a very small degree, by honest though absurd fanaticism. ”

“ My son Hesden has told me of your courage in preventing what must otherwise have resulted in a most terrible conflict yesterday, and I feel it to be my duty, in behalf of many ladies whose husbands and sons were present on that occasion, to express to you our gratitude. It is seldom that such opportunity presents itself to our sex, and still more seldom that we are able to improve it when presented. Your courage in exerting the power you have over the peculiar people toward whom you hold such important relations, commands my utmost admiration. ”

“ Now, Nimbus, and the rest of you, you all know that I am your friend. My brother was a soldier, and fought for your liberty on this very horse. I have never advised you except for your good, and you know I never will. If it is right and best for you to right now, I will not hinder you. Nay, I will say God-speed, and for aught I know fight with you. I am no coward, if I am a woman. You know what I have risked already for your good. ”

“ The officers of election had left the polls, and in front of the bridge could be seen Hesden Le Moyne and the burly sheriff striving to keep back the angry crowd of white men. On the hill the colored men, for a moment struck with amazement, were now arming with stones, in dead earnest, uttering loud cries of vengeance for one of their number who, wounded and affrighted, lay groaning and writhing by the roadside. They outnumbered the whites very greatly, but the latter excelled them in arms, in training, and in position. ”

“ Such a measure, planned upon a liberal scale, would be a vindication of the manhood of the North; an assertion of its sense of right as well as its determination to develop at the South the same intelligence, the same freedom of thought and action, the same equality of individual right, that have made the North prosperous and free and strong, while the lack of them has made the South poor and ignorant and weak. ”

“ The very corner-stone of Southern legislation and jurisprudence for more than a hundred years was based upon this idea: the negro can have no rights, and can testify as to no rights or wrongs, as against a white man. So that the master might take his slave with him when he committed murder or did any other act in contravention of law or right, and that slave was like the mute eunuch of the seraglio, silent and voiceless before the law. ”

“ He covered his face with his hands and bowed his head in the self-abasement which hopeless affliction so often brings.
"Eliab," said the teacher soothingly, as if her pupil were a child instead of a man older than herself, "you should not give way to such thoughts. You should rise above them, and by using the powers you have, become an honor to your race."
"No, Miss Mollie," he replied, with a sigh, as he raised his head and gazed into her face earnestly. "There ain't nothing in this world for me to look forward to only to help my people. ”

“ The pleasure of learning is reward enough to me. But my people, Miss Mollie, I must think of them. I am only a poor withered branch. They are the straight young tree. I must think of them and not of Eliab. You have taught me—this affair, everything, teaches me—that they can only be made free by knowledge. I begin to see that the law can only give us an opportunity to make ourselves freemen. Liberty must be earned ”

“ So it may safely be estimated that the average taxes paid by a colored man equals one half or two thirds of a month's wages, even when he has not a cent of property, and only maintains his family by a constant miracle of effort which would be impossible but for the harsh training which slavery gave and which is one of the beneficent results of that institution. If he refuses to work the road, or to pay or list the poll-tax, he may be indicted, fined, and his labor sold to the highest bidder, precisely as in the old slave-times, to discharge the fine and pay the tax and costs of prosecution. ”

“ Yet many a wiser head than that of Berry Lawson, or even that of his more fortunate kinsman, the many-named Nimbus, has been sorely puzzled to understand how ignorance and poverty and inexperience should maintain the right, preserve and protect themselves against opposing wisdom, wealth and malicious skill, according to the spirit and tenor of the Reconstruction Acts. But it is a problem which ought to trouble no one, since it has been enacted and provided by the Nation that all such persons shall have all the rights and privileges of citizens. ”

“ He sent flaming circulars to bleak New England health-exhibits to the smitten of consumption, painting the advantages of climate, soil, and society—did all in his power to induce immigrants to come and buy, in order that he might beat off poverty and failure and open disgrace. He made a brave fight, but it had never occurred to him to sell an acre to a colored man when he was accosted by Nimbus, who, still wearing some part of his uniform, came, over to negotiate with him for the purchase of Red Wing. ”

“ Their acts of oppression and outrage were always perpetrated in defence of some supposed right of a defenceless and friendless race, overwhelmed with poverty—the bondmen of ignorance—who had no money with which to corrupt, no art with which to beguile, and no power with which to overawe these representatives of authority. For the first time in the history of mankind, the corrupt and unprincipled agents of undefined power became the servants, friends, protectors, agents, and promoters of the poor and weak and the oppressors of the rich, the strong, the learned, and the astute. ”

“ Le Moyne, to make such a measure of present interest in the cure of present evils?"
"Not at all," answered Hesden. "By such a measure you bring the purest men of the South into close and intimate relations with the Government. You cut off the sap which nourishes the yet living root of the State Rights dogma. You bring every man to feel as you feel, that there is something greater and grander than his State and section. Besides that, you draw the poison from the sting which rankles deeper than you think. ”

“ I offered my life and gave an arm for a cause in which I did not believe; shall I not brave as much in the endeavor to serve my country in a manner which my mind and conscience approve? I seek for difficulty with no one; but it may as well be understood that Hesden Le Moyne does not turn in his tracks because of any man's anger. ”

“ He had always been attentive to his tasks, was a prime favorite with his overseer, and had already acquired the reputation of being one of the most expert and trusty men that the whole region could furnish, for a tobacco crop. Every step in the process of growing and curing—from the preparation of the seed-bed to the burning of the coal-pit, and gauging the heat required in the mud-daubed barn for different kinds of leaf and in every stage of cure—was perfectly familiar to him, and he could always be trusted to see that it was properly and opportunely done. ”

“ Little by little, the self-respect which had been ground out of him and his family by generations of that condition of inferiority which the common-liver, the self-helper of the South, was forced to endure under the old slave regime, began to grow up in his heart. He began to feel himself a man, and prized the rank-marks on his collar as the certificate and endorsement of his manhood. As this feeling developed, he began to consider the relations between himself, his family, and others like them, and the rich neighbors by whom they were surrounded and looked down upon. ”

“ And a man—Do you know, Miss Mollie," he said, breaking suddenly off—"that a man who was in that war, even if he did not get a shot, discounted his life about ten years? It was the wear and tear of the struggle. We are different from other nations. We have no professional soldiers—at least none to speak of. To such, war is merely a business and peace an interlude. There is no mental strain in their case. But in our war we were all volunteers. Every man, on both sides, went into the army with the fate of a nation resting on his shoulders, and because he felt the burden of responsibility. ”

“ Le Moyne, "I hear they have sent for you to go back to Red Wing. I am sorry, for you have given us great pleasure; but I am afraid you will have only sad memories of Mulberry Hill. It is too bad! Poor Hildreth had taken such a liking to you, too. I am sure I don't blame him, for I am as much in love with you as an invalid can be with any one but herself. Hesden will have a hard time alone in this great house with two sick people on his hands." ”

“ The Nation gave the jewel of liberty into the hands of the former, armed them with the weapons of self-government, and said: "Ye are many; protect what ye have received." Then it took away its hand, turned away its eyes, closed its ears to every cry of protest or of agony, and said: "We will not aid you nor protect you. Though you are ignorant, from you will we demand the works of wisdom. Though you are weak, great things shall be required at your hands." ”

“ To his mind, honor—that honor which he accounted the dearest birthright his native South had given—required that from and after the day of his surrender he should seek and desire, not the gratification of revenge nor the display of prejudice, but the success and glory of the great republic. He felt that the American Nation had become greater and more glorious by the very act of overcoming rebellion. ”

“ There was a gleeful time in the invalid's room while the fair girl was being habited in the garments of a by-gone generation, and when Hesden Le Moyne and his boy Hildreth were admitted to the hearty evening meal, two women who seemed like counterparts sat opposite each other at the sparkling board—the one habited in black silk with short waist, a low, square bodice with a mass of tender lawn showing about the fair slender neck, puffed at the shoulders with straight, close sleeves reaching to the wrists, around which peeped some rows of soft white lace ”

“ The little colony upon the Mayflower was a township, and every man of its passengers carried the seed of the ideal township system in his heart."
"Admitted, admitted, Mr. Le Moyne," said the other, smiling at his earnestness. "But how shall we repeat the experiment? Would you import men into every township of the South, in order that they might carry the seeds of civil liberty with them, and build up the township system there?" ”

“ To admit that they were honest in holding such views as they did is only to give them the benefit of a presumption which, when applied to the acts and motives of whole peoples, becomes irrefutable. A mob may be wrong-headed, but it is always right-hearted. What it does may be infamous, but underlying its acts is always the sting of a great evil or the hope of a great good.
Thus it was, too, that to the subtler mind and less selfish heart of Hesden Le Moyne, every attempt to nullify the effect or evade the operation of the Reconstruction laws was tinged with the idea of personal dishonor. ”

“ You'd better go and preach peace to Eliab Hill. Poor fellow! I don't reckon the man lives who ever heard him say a harsh thing to any one. He was always that mild I used to wonder the Lord didn't take him long ago. Nigger as he was, and cripple as he was, I'd ruther had his religion than that of all the mean, hypocritical, murdering aristocrats in Horsford."
"But, Mr. Jackson, you should not speak in that way of our best citizens."
"Oh, the devil! I know—but that is no matter, Mr. Le Moyne. I didn't come to argue with you. Did you ever hear anything agin' me outside of my politics?" ”