Marietta Holley

“ The links that weld humanity together are such curius ones, wove out of so many strands, visible and invisible, strong as steel and relentless as death, and that reach out so fur, so fur on every side, how can any one tell whether a great strain and voyalence inflicted on the lowest link of that chain may not shatter and corrode and destroy the very highest and brightest one?
“The hull chain of humanity is held in one hand, and we are bein’ pulled along by that mighty, inexorable hand into we know not what. ”

“ What are a few diamonds, that can be bought and sold, to be compared to the downfall of all hope and happiness, the contempt and derision of the world, the ruin of a life, and the loss of a immortal soul? ”

“ And to Genieve and Victor all sadness and shadows lay fur away like a faint cloud in the horizon, almost unseen and forgotten in the clear sunshine of their happiness. For true love will make happiness everywhere. Everything looked prosperous, and I had got my edgin’ done, and Maggie and I had made the nice linen garments and ornimented ’em with the lace. ”

“ A race that has given to the world a Fred Douglass, and that sublime figure of Toussaint L’Ouverture, that form that towers higher than any white saint or hero—and he risin’ to that almost divine height by his own unaided powers, without culture or education—what may it not hope to aspire to, helped by these aids? ”

“ And yet as he lays there, his wide-open eyes look up into the bending heaven as if demanding justice and pity from Him who left thrones and divine glory to dwell with the poor and despised, who wept with them over their dead, and who is now gone into the heavens to plead their cause aginst their oppressors. ”

“ It was hard for this hot-blooded, misguided, warm-hearted Southern people to lose at once all their brilliant dreams of an independent, aristocratic Confederacy—it was hard for them to lose home, and country, and wealth, and ambition at one blow. ”

“ And she see over the rollin’ billows of turbulent factions, and swellin’ hatred, and mistaken zeal, and perils from friends, and perils from foes, and perils from high places, and perils from low ones, and the black waters of ignorance, and laziness, and discontent, and old habits and customs a breakin’ up and a dashin’ their spray here and there, and all the horror and woe and danger of an uprisin’ and a exodus—she see over all these swellin’ waves into the fair country that lay beyend. ”

“ Through centuries of hereditary influences and teachings this belief was ingrained, born in them, bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh, soul of their soul, implanted first by nature, then hardened and made invulnerable by centuries of habits, beliefs, and influences—this instinctive, hereditary contempt and aversion for the black race only as servants. ”

“ This seems to me a safe way for the imperilled South while it is passin’ through this crisis, and the light shines jest as fair and fresh in the newer day that gleams in the distance. It is shinin’ in the eyes of them that see fur off, fair and beautiful, the New Republic, where there are equal rights, educated suffrage, co-operative labor. Oh! blessed land beyend the swellin’ waves of the unquiet Present!
Genieve sees it plain, and so duz Victor. And thousands and thousands of the educated and morally riz up of the colored race see it to-day, and are a strivin’ towards it. ”

“ A mule stands up before their eyes higher than any idea of Justice or Liberty.
“They are liars, they are thieves, they are lazy, they are hangers-on to the skirts of civilization, they can never stand upright, they have got to be carried all their days. And it is this mass of ignorance, and superstition, and vice that you Northerners want to see ruling us white men of the South. ”

“ The old trees of Custom and Habit, though their haughty tops may have been cut off a little by the lightnin’ of war, yet the black, solid, onbroken stumps stand thick in their way—so thick they can’t force their way through ’em—and the black mud of Open Enmity, and Arrogance, and Prejudice is on one side of ’em, and on the other the shiftin’, treacherous quicksands of Mistaken Counsel. ”

“ Them who have agonized over the woes and wrongs of the world, and tried with anointed vision to find out the true wisdom of life and right livin’—have spent their whole noble lives for the good of poor humanity—
They must kneel on in silence, and stay in seclusion, and see the freedom of their children and the children of humanity bought and sold, and sunk in the dirt, and trailed in the mire by them who have never given a thought to righteousness and right livin’. ”

“ She taught them all that she learned herself, taught them with the present love of all her lovin’ heart, and with the fur-seein’ eye of one who sees in this new generation the future blessing and regeneration of her people. ”

“ But bimeby the plagues increase, their troubles grow greater and greater, they encompass them about, there is no way out only to liberate the great throng that stands between them and safety. And bimeby, when there is a dead one in every house, and weepin’ is on every side, and the mourners go about the street, and the mountains are behind, and the sea in front, and there is no way out only to liberate the oppressed, why, then there is a “military necessity.”
God’s opportunity has come. Rather than perish themselves they will let justice be done, let the oppressed go free. ”

“ No; I dare presume to say that every time you found a prophet you would find some woman a takin’ care on him, so he could have the freedom of mind and the absence of domestic cares necessary to keep his soul the calm medium through which divine truth could pour down upon a sinful world.
“The sieve must be held right end up or you can’t sift through it; hold it sideways or bottom end up, and where be you?
“No; old Miss Hosey and Miss Maleky, I dare presume to say, jest wrastled round with household cares and left them old men as free as they could. ”

“ Over the better feelings of the white race, dominating them, are the black shapes of contempt and repulsion towards the race once their servants, made their equals by a wordy fiction of their enemies, but still under their feet. ”

“ But anyway, no matter by what name we call these seeds, they lay in the soul till the Sun of Occasion warms ’em into life, and then they open their star flowers and find the way to the Right and the True. ”

“ Sez John Richard, “A race that has accumulated property to the extent of six millions of dollars in 39one Southern State since the war, under all the well-nigh unendurable drawbacks and persecutions that have beset it, will be able, I believe, to at least do as much, when these hampering and oppressive influences are withdrawn and the colored man has a clear field, in an atmosphere of strength and courage and encouragement—where in this air of liberty he can enjoy the rewards of his labor and behold the upbuilding of his race. ”

“ The few that remained would not endanger the commonwealth, and would most likely, in the fulness of time, and as the glowin’ story of the New Republic reached their ears, be gathered into the Land of Promise, to become leaders there, and helpers of the weak.”
Sez Col. Seybert, “They would starve there. They are a low, degraded, helpless, lazy set. They had rather lay in the sun and do nothing than to work.” ”

“ If he has dropped his chains onto the damp, mouldy pavement, if he has stood on the very lowest of them steps and seen way up over his head the warm sun a shinin’ and heard the song of birds and the distant rushin’ of clear waters, you never can put him back down into that dark, damp dungeon agin, and slip his hands into the fetters and keep him there. ”

“ And never stopped to think, so it would seem, whether three millions strong of an ignorant, superstitious, long-degraded people, the majority of whom could not read nor write, and were ignorant of the first principles of truth and justice, could suddenly be lifted up to become the peers, and in many cases the superiors, of a cultured and refined people who had had long ages of culture and education behind them, and, above all, class prejudices. ”

“ Maybe it is God’s way of dealing with this people, to make them willing to press forward through the wilderness of their almost unendurable trials and go forward into their own country, from whence their fathers were stolen by these pale faces, and there, in that free, fresh land to found a new republic of their own. ”

“ After years and years of haughty supremacy, ambition and pride growing rankly, as they must in such a soil, fostered, it would seem, by Northern indolence and indifference, the South was conquered by armed force—brought down to the humiliation of defeat by a successful, if generous foe. ”

“ Some of these idees he got from Genieve, some on ’em he learned from books, and kindred minds, and close observation, and remembrance of talks he had hearn when such things sunk deep in his heart, and some on ’em sprung up from seeds God had planted in his soul, onbeknown to him; in a woman we call it intuition. ”

“ And which would you ruther have, the black shadow growin’ deeper and deeper every year on this continent, and sectional hatred and race prejudice, and fear, and distrust, and jealousy, and alarm, and a constant variance all the time, onrest, and despair, and helplessness—which would you ruther have, them cruel spirits to camp down by you for good, and a growin’ worse all the time, or to make a big effort and heave the load off for good, and clear the air of all the bad atmosphere of internal and inevitable war, and let Peace settle down on this onhappy land agin? ”

“ And from all these cozy homes in city and in country she heard the steady tread, tread of the children walkin’ along to the music of the future, the future of accomplishment, of education, of promise. She saw them forever learnin’ new things, the newer things that wuz forever displacin’ the old—newer, grander, broader views and aims. For heaven and earth wuz drawin’ nearer to each other, and the era of peace on earth, good-will to man had come.
Long did Genieve set there wrapped in the glory of what she saw—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know. ”

“ The weak crushed and trodden under foot, the strong shot down by secret violence—murder, rapine, and misrule taking the part of law, and both races swept along to their ruin like a vision of the night. ”

“ You cannot make a soap-stun into a runnin’ vine, or a flat-iron blossom out with dewy roses, or a thistle bear pound sweet apples—it can’t be done, no matter how hard you work, or how pure your motives are.
So these things bein’ settled and positive, Victor thought—and I’ll be hanged if I could blame him for thinkin’—that the sooner his people got into a place of their own, away from the white race that had fettered them, and they had fettered so long, the better it would be for them. ”

“ The race so lately the dominant and all-powerful one through the nation, by the fiction of law dropped down under the legal rule of these so long down-trodden, oppressed, ignorant masses, what could the result be? ”

“ And all along the way, though dark shadows may be hoverin’ nigh, there is light, and glory, and peace, and pretty soon, bimeby they will come out into a large place, the fair open ground of Beauty and Desire, into all that they had hoped and longed for. ”

“ I thought at first I could do marvellous things; later, when many failures had made me more humble, I thought if I 16could help only one soul my labor would not be in vain. For who knows,” sez John Richard dreamily, “who knows the tremendous train of influences one sets in motion when he is under God enabled to turn one life about from the path of destruction towards the good and the right?
“Who knows but he is helping to kindle a light that shall yet lighten the pathway of a Toussaint L’Ouverture or a Fred Douglass on to victory, and a world be helped by the means? ”

“ Our darlin’, the light of our eyes, has gone forever. What can any sunshine do, no matter how bright, only to pour down vainly upon the sweet blue eyes that will never open again? And 366fur in the East a grand republic may rise holdin’ in its newer life the completed knowledge of the older civilizations. But Snow is dead!
Yes, I sez to myself, as did another, “If they want a new song for their Africa free, let none look to me,” I sez, “my old heart cannot raise to anthems of joy and glory.”
No; my heart is bendin’ over a little cold form. ”