Fifteen Days: An Extract from Edward Colvil's Journal. Mary Lowell Putnam
this appeal to fade from his face. As I did not think there was much hope of the Doctor's taking the part proposed to him, at least until he should find himself in company with persons who professed the opinions he was now maintaining, I tried to divert him to another topic, and succeeded; but it was only to bring about a yet warmer passage between him and his friend. I was not sorry, however; for this time the subject was one that interested me strongly. He had referred, the evening before, to some dangerous adventures Harry and he had had among the mountains of Mantaw County, which they crossed, going from Eden to Cyclops. I now asked him for the details. He turned to me at once, and entered upon the story with great spirit. I am familiar with the region in which the scene was laid, but, listening to him, it took a new aspect. I believe those hills will always be higher for me henceforth—the glens deeper and darker; I shall hear new voices in the rush of the torrents and the roar of the pines. Harry listened admiringly too, until the Doctor, brought by the course of his narrative to the services of a certain slave-guide, named Jonas, took a jocular tone, seemingly as much amused by the black man's acuteness and presence of mind as he might have been by the tricks of an accomplished dog.
"A capital fellow!" interposed Harry, with emphasis.
"He showed himself intelligent and faithful, certainly. I sent his master a good account of him. He did his duty by us." This in the Doctor's mildest tone.
The answer was in Harry's firmest:—"His duty as a man. It was real, hearty kindness that he showed us. We owe him a great deal. I am not sure that we did not owe him our lives that dark night. I regard him as a friend."
"Your other friends are flattered.—It is curious how these negrophiles betray themselves";—the Doctor had turned to me;—"they show that they think of the blacks just as we do, by their admiration when they meet one who shows signs of intelligence and good feeling." Ho looked at Harry, but in vain. "Here Harry, now, has been falling into transports all along the road." Harry kept his eyes on the table, but the Doctor was not to be balked. "Confess now, confess you have been surprised—and a good deal more surprised than I was—to find common sense and humanity in black men!"
"No, not in black men. I have been surprised to find not only talent and judgment, but dignity and magnanimity, in slaves."
"You must find the system not altogether a bad one which has developed such specimens of the human being—out of such material, above all."
"You must admit that the race is a strong and a high one which has not been utterly debased by such a system—if it is to be called a system. I only wish our own race"——
"Showed an equal power of resistance?"
"That was what I was going to say."
"You might have said it. Yes—the whites are the real sufferers."
"I stopped because I remembered instances of men who have resisted nobly."
"I am glad you can do justice to them. I thought you did not believe in humane slaveholders."
"I was not thinking of them."
"Ah! to be sure not! My friend Harvey, who entertained us so hospitably, is a bad man, I suppose?"
"A mistaken man."
"That is to be proved; he is trying to work out a difficult problem."
"He is attempting an impossible compromise."
"Compromise! Word of fear to the true New-Englander! Compromise? He is trying to reconcile his own comfort with that of his laborers, I suppose you mean."
"He is trying to reconcile injustice with humanity."
"See the stern old Puritan vein! I doubt whether his ancestor, the model of Massachusetts governors, ever carried a stiffer upper lip." And the Doctor surveyed Harry with a look from which he could not exclude a certain softening of affectionate admiration. "And he, a living exemplification of the persistence of race, is a stickler for the equality of all mankind! It is hard for one of that strict line to bend his views to circumstances," the Doctor went on, in a more indulgent tone. "Harry, my boy, you are in a new latitude. You must accept another standard. You cannot try things here by the weights and measures of the Puritans of the North. But who are your examples of resistance, though?"
"The Puritans of the South. The men here who have but one standard—that of right. The men here who are true to the principle which our country represents, and by which it is to live."
"What principle?"
"That the laws of man must be founded on the law of God."
"You mean, to be explicit, such men as Judge Henley of Virginia, Dr. Kirwin of South Carolina, and, above all, Shaler of this State?"
"Yes."
"Who, instead of living with the people among whom their lot had been cast, and protecting and improving them, scattered them to the four winds of heaven, and all for the comfort of their own sickly consciences!"
"Charles Shaler does not look like a man of a sickly conscience."
The Doctor could not forbear smiling at the image Harry brought before him. He was beginning to answer, but stopped short and turned to me with a look of apology.
"The subject is ill-chosen," he said; "I do not know how we came upon it; though, indeed, we are always coming upon it. We have sworn a truce a dozen times, but the war breaks out again when we are least expecting it."
"The subject cannot be more interesting to you than it is to me," I answered.
"But your interest in it may be of a different sort from ours."
"It is quite as impartial. I am not a slaveholder."
"Is it possible?"
The Doctor's voice betrayed that there was pleasure in his surprise, but, except in this involuntary way, he did not express it. He went on in his former tone.
"Well, that is more than Harry here can say. Since he has been in your State, he has become master, by right of purchase, of a human soul."
I looked at Harry.
"Yes," he said, gravely, "I have made myself my brother's keeper."
"And very literally of a soul," the Doctor continued. "The body was merely thrown in as an inconsiderable part of the bargain. We were on the road from Omocqua to Tenpinville, where we meant to dine. Harry was a little ahead. I was walking slowly, looking along the side of the road for what I might find, when I heard, in front of us and coming towards us, a tramping and a shuffling and a clanking that I knew well enough for the sound of a slave-coffle on the move. I did not lift my head; I am not curious of such sights. But presently I heard Harry calling, and in an imperative tone that he has sometimes, though, perhaps, you would not think it. I looked up, upon that, and saw him supporting in his arms a miserable stripling, who was falling, fainting, out of the coffle. Harry was hailing the slave-trader, who brought up the rear of the train on horseback. I foresaw vexation, and made haste. The cavalier got there first, though. By the time I came up, he had dismounted, and Harry and he were in treaty, or at least in debate. It was a picture! The poor wretch they were parleying over was lying with his wasted, lead-colored face on Harry's shoulder, but was still held by the leg to his next man, who was scowling at him as if he thought the boy had fainted only to make the shackles bite sharper into the sore flesh of his comrade. Harry held his prize in a way which showed he did not mean to part with it. 'Name your price! Name your own price!' were the first words I heard. It seemed the slave-dealer was making difficulties. I thought he would jump at the chance of getting rid of what was only a burden, and plainly could never be anything else to anybody; but no; he said he could not sell the boy, and seemed to mean it. Harry is too much used to having his own way to give it up very easily, but I don't know whether he would have got it this time, if I had not interfered with my remonstrances:—
"'What are you going to do with him? Where are you going to take him? Who's to be his nurse on the road?'
"I meant to bring Harry to his senses. I only brought