The Man in Gray. Jr. Thomas Dixon
Ruffin's flushed face. He shook his head again.
"The book is unanswerable, because it is an appeal to emotion based on a study of Slavery in the abstract. If no allowance be made for the tender and humane character of the Southern people or the modification of statutory law by the growth of public sentiment, its imaginary scenes are within the bounds of the probable. The story is crude, but it is told with singular power without a trace of bitterness. The blind ferocity of Garrison, who sees in every slaveholder a fiend, nowhere appears in its pages. On the other hand, Mrs. Stowe has painted one slaveholder as gentle and generous. Simon Legree, her villain, is a Yankee who has moved South and taken advantage of the power of a master to work evil. Such men have come South. Such things might be done. It is precisely this possibility that makes Slavery indefensible. You know this. And I know it."
"You astound me, Colonel."
"Yes, I'm afraid I do. I'd like to speak a message to the South about this book. I've a great deal more to say to my own people than to our critics."
Ruffin rose, thrust his hands in his pockets, walked to the window, turned suddenly and faced his host.
"But look here, Colonel Lee, I'm damned if I can agree with you, sir! Suppose Slavery is wrong—an economic fallacy and a social evil—I don't say it is, mind you. Just suppose for the sake of argument that it is. We don't propose to be lectured on this subject by our inferiors in the North. The children of the men who stole these slaves from Africa and sold them to us at a profit!"
Lee laughed softly.
"The sins of an inferior cannot excuse the mistakes of a superior. The man of superior culture and breeding should lead the world in progress. What has come over us in the South, Ruffin? Your father and mine never defended Slavery. They knew it was to them, their children and this land, a curse. It was a blessing only to the savage who was being taught the rudiments of civilization at a tremendous cost to his teacher. The first Abolition Societies were organized in the South. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Randolph, all the great leaders of the old South, the men whose genius created this republic—all denounced Slavery. They told us that it is a poison, breeding pride and tyranny of character, that it corrupts the mind of the child, that it degrades labor, wears out our land, destroys invention, and saps our ideal of liberty. And yet we have begun to defend it."
"Because we are being hounded, traduced and insulted by the North, yes—"
"Yes, but also because we must have more land."
"We've as much right in the West as the North."
"That's not the real reason we demand the right of entry. We are exhausting the soil of the South by our slipshod farming on great plantations where we use old-fashioned tools and slave labor. We refuse to study history. Ancient empires tried this system and died. The Carthagenians developed it to perfection and fell before the Romans. The Romans borrowed it from Carthage. It destroyed the small farms and drove out the individual land owners. It destroyed respect for trades and crafts. It strangled the development of industrial art. And when the test came Roman civilization passed. You hot-heads under the goading of Abolition crusaders now blindly propose to build the whole structure of Southern Society on this system."
"We've no choice, sir."
"Then we must find one. Slowly but surely the clouds gather for the storm. We catch only the first rumblings now but it's coming."
Ruffin flared.
"Now listen to me, Colonel. I'm a man of cool judgment and I never lose my temper, sir—"
He choked with passion, recovered and rushed on.
"If they ever dare attack us, we won't need writers. We'll draw our swords and thrash them! The South is growing rich and powerful."
Lee lifted his hand in a quick gesture of protest.
"A popular delusion, my friend. Under Slave labor the South is growing poorer daily. While the Northern States, under the wage system, ten times more efficient, are draining the blood and treasure of Europe and growing richer by leaps and bounds. Norfolk, Richmond and Charleston should have been the great cities of the Eastern Seaboard. They are as yet unimportant towns in the world commerce. Boston, Philadelphia and New York have become the centers of our business life, of our trade, our culture, our national power. While slavery is scratching the surface of our soil with old-fashioned plows, while we quit work at twelve o'clock every Saturday, spend our Sundays at church, and set two negroes to help one do nothing Monday morning, the North is sweeping onward in the science of agriculture. While they invent machines which double their crops, cut their labor down a hundred per cent, we are fighting for new lands in the West to exhaust by our primitive methods. The treasures of the earth yet lie in our mines untouched by pick or spade. Our forests stand unbroken—vast reaches of wilderness. The slave is slow and wasteful. Wage labor, quick, efficient. Our chief industry is the breeding of a race of feverish politicians."
"You know, Colonel Lee, as well as I do that Slavery in the South has been a blessing to the negro."
Lee moved his head in quick assent.
"I admit that Slavery took the negro from the jungle, from a slavery the most cruel known to human history, that it has taught him the use of tools, the science of agriculture, the worship of God, the first lessons in the alphabet of humanity. But unless we can now close this school, my friend, somebody is going to try to divide this Union some day—"
Ruffin struck his hands together savagely.
"The quicker the better, I say! If the children of the men who created this republic are denied equal rights under its laws and in its Territories, then I say, to your tents, oh, Israel!"
"And do you know what that may mean?"
"A Southern and a Northern Nation. Let them come!"
"The States have been knit together slowly, but inevitably by steam and electricity. I can conceive of no greater tragedy than an attempt to-day to divide them."
"I can conceive of no greater blessing!" Ruffin fairly shouted.
"So William Lloyd Garrison, the leader of Abolition, is saying in his paper The Liberator. And, Ruffin, unless we can lock up some hot-heads in the South and such fanatics as Garrison in the North, the mob, not the statesman, is going to determine the laws and the policy of this country. Somebody will try to divide the Union. And then comes the deluge! When I think of it, the words of Thomas Jefferson ring through my soul like an alarm bell in the night. 'I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that His justice cannot sleep forever. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than these black people shall be free—'"
Ruffin lifted his hand in a commanding gesture.
"Don't omit his next sentence, sir—'nor is it less certain, that the two races, equally free, cannot live under the same government—'"
"Exactly," Lee answered solemnly. "And that is the only reason why I have ever allowed myself to own a slave for a moment—the insoluble problem of what to do with him when freed. The one excuse for Slavery which the South can plead without fear before the judgment bar of God is the blacker problem which their emancipation will create. Unless it can be brought about in a miracle of patience, wisdom and prayer."
He paused and smiled at Ruffin's forlorn expression.
"Will you call your reporter now to take my views?"
"No, sir," the planter growled. "I've changed my mind."
The Colonel laughed softly.
"I thought you might."
Ruffin gazed in silence through the window at the blinking lights in Washington, turned and looked moodily at his calm host. He spoke in a slow, dreamy monotone, his eyes on space seeing nothing:
"Colonel Lee, this country is hell bent and hell bound. I can see no hope for it."
Lee lifted his head with firm faith.
"Ruffin,