Bricks Without Straw Part 20

Thus the simple-minded colored man, taught to meditate by the solitude which his affliction enforced upon him, speculated in regard to the _leges non scripta_ which control the action of the human mind and condition its progress.

"What has put you in this strange mood, Eliab?" asked the teacher wonderingly.

His face flushed, and the mobile mouth twitched with emotion as he glanced earnestly toward her, and then, with an air of sudden resolution, said:

"Well, you see, that matter of the election--you took it all in in a minute, when the horse came back. You knew the white folks would feel aggravated by that procession, and there would be trouble. Now, I never thought of that. I just thought it was nice to be free, and have our own music and march under that dear old flag to do the work of free men and citizens. That was all."

"But Nimbus thought of it, and that was why he sent back the horse,"

she answered.

"Not at all. He only thought they might pester the horse to plague him, and the horse might get away and be hurt. We didn't, none of us, think what the white folks would feel, because we didn't know.

You did."

"But why should this affect you?"

"Just because it shows that education is something more that I had thought--something so large and difficult that one of my age, raised as I have been, can only get a taste of it at the best."

"Well, what then? You are not discouraged?"

"Not for myself--no. 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; it cannot be given."

"That is very true," said the practical girl, whose mind recognized at once the fact which she had never formulated to herself. But as she looked into his face, working with intense feeling and so lighted with the glory of a n.o.ble purpose as to make her forget the stricken frame to which it was chained, she was puzzled at what seemed inconsequence in his words. So she added, wonderingly, "But I don't see why this should depress you. Only think how much you have done toward the end you have in view. Just think what you have accomplished--what strides you have made toward a full and complete manhood. You ought to be proud rather than discouraged."

"Ah!" said he, "that has been for myself, Miss Mollie, not for my people. What am I to my race? Aye," he continued, with a glance at his withered limbs, "to the least one of them not--not--" He covered his face with his hands and bowed his head in the self-abas.e.m.e.nt 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. I am only the dust on the Lord's chariot-wheels--only the dust, which must be brushed out of the way in order that their glory may s.h.i.+ne forth.

And that," he continued impetuously, paying no attention to her gesture of remonstrance, "is what I wanted to speak to you about this evening. It is hard to say, but I must say it--must say it now. I have been taking too much of your time and attention, Miss Mollie."

"I am sure, Mr. Hill--" she began, in some confusion.

"Yes, I have," he went on impetuously, while his face flushed hotly.

"It is the young and strong only who can enter into the Canaan the Lord has put before our people. I thought for a while that we were just standing on the banks of Jordan--that the promised land was right over yon, and the waters piled up like a wall, so that even poor weak 'Liab might cross over. But I see plainer now. We're only just past the Red Sea, just coming into the wildnerness, and if I can only get a glimpse from h.o.r.eb, wid my old eyes by and by, 'Liab 'll be satisfied. It'll be enough, an' more'n enough, for him. He can only help the young ones--the lambs of the flock--a little, mighty little, p'raps, but it's all there is for him to do." "Why, Eliab--" began the astonished teacher again.

"Don't! don't! Miss Mollie, if you please," he cried, with a look of pain. "I'se done tried--I hez, Miss Mollie. G.o.d only knows how I'se tried! But it ain't no use--no use," he continued, with a fierce gesture, and relapsing unconsciously into the rougher dialect that he had been training himself to avoid. "I can't do it, an' there's no use a-tryin'. There ain't nothin' good for me in this worl'--not in this worl'. It's hard to give it up, Miss Mollie--harder'n you'll ever dream; but I hain't blind. I knows the brand is on me. It's on my tongue now, that forgets all I've learned jes ez soon ez the time of trial comes."

He seemed wild with excitement as he leaned forward on the table toward her, and accompanied his words with that eloquence of gesticulation which only the hands that are tied to crippled forms acquire. He paused suddenly, bowed his head upon his crossed arms, and his frame shook with sobs. She rose, and would have come around the table to him. Raising his head quickly, he cried almost fiercely:

"Don't! don't! don't come nigh me, Miss Mollie! I'm going to do a hard thing, almost too hard for me. I'm going to get off the chariot-wheel--out of the light of the glory--out of the way of the young and the strong! Them that's got to fight the Lord's battles must have the training, and not them that's bound to fall in the wilderness. The time is precious--precious, and must not be wasted. You can't afford to spend so much of it on me! The Lord can't afford ter hev ye, Miss Mollie! I must step aside, an' I'se gwine ter do it now. If yer's enny time an' strength ter spar'

more'n yer givin' day by day in the school, I want yer should give it to--to--Winnie an' 'Thusa--they're bright girls, that have studied hard, and are young and strong. It is through such as them that we must come up--our people, I mean. I want you to give them my hour, Miss Mollie--_my_ hour! Don't say you won't do it!"

he cried, seeing a gesture of dissent. "Don't say it! You must do it! Promise me, Miss Mollie--for my sake! for--promise me--now--quick!

afore I gets too weak to ask it!"

"Why, certainly, Eliab," she said, in amazement, while she half shrank from him as if in terror. "I will do it if you desire it so much. But you should not get so excited. Calm yourself! I am sure I don't see why you should take such a course; but, as you say, they are two bright girls and will make good teachers, which are much needed."

"Thank G.o.d! thank G.o.d!" cried the cripple, as his head fell again upon his arms. After a moment he half raised it and said, weakly,

"Will you please call Nimbus, Miss Mollie? I must go home now. And please, Miss Mollie, don't think hard of 'Liab--don't, Miss Mollie,"

he said humbly.

"Why should I?" she asked in surprise. "You have acted n.o.bly, though I cannot think you have done wisely. You are nervous now. You may think differently hereafter. If you do, you have only to say so.

I will call Nimbus. Good-by!"

She took her hat and gloves and went down the aisle. Happening to turn near the door to replace a book her dress had brushed from a desk, she saw him gazing after her with a look that haunted her memory long afterward.

As the door closed behind her he slid from his chair and bowed his head upon it, crying out in a voice of tearful agony, "Thank G.o.d!

thank G.o.d!" again and again, while his unfinished form shook with hysteric sobs. "And _she_ said I was not wise!" he half laughed, as the tears ran down his face and he resumed his invocation of thankfulness. Thus Nimbus found him and carried him home with his wonted tenderness, soothing him like a babe, and wondering what had occurred to discompose his usually sedate and cheerful friend.

"I declare, Lucy," said Mollie Ainslie that evening, to her co-worker, over their cosy tea, "I don't believe I shall ever get to understand these people. There is that Eliab Hill, who was getting along so nicely, has concluded to give up his studies. I believe he is half crazy anyhow. He raved about it, and glared at me so that I was half frightened out of my wits. I wonder why it is that cripples are always so queer, anyhow?"

She would have been still more amazed if she had known that from that day Eliab Hill devoted himself to his studies with a redoubled energy, which more than made up for the loss of his teacher's aid.

Had she herself been less a child she would have seen that he whom she had treated as such was, in truth, a man of rare strength.

CHAPTER XXII.

HOW THE FALLOW WAS SEEDED.

The time had come when the influences so long at work, the seed which the past had sown in the minds and hearts of races, must at length bear fruit. The period of actual reconstruction had pa.s.sed, and independent, self-regulating States had taken the place of Military Districts and Provisional Governments. The people of the South began, little by little, to realize that they held their future in their own hands--that the supervising and restraining power of the General Government had been withdrawn. The colored race, yet dazed with the new light of liberty, were divided between exultation and fear. They were like a child taking his first steps--full of joy at the last accomplished, full of terror at the one which was before.

The state of mind of the Southern white man, with reference to the freedman and his exaltation to the privilege of citizens.h.i.+p is one which cannot be too frequently a.n.a.lyzed or too closely kept in mind by one who desires fully to apprehend the events which have since occurred, and the social and political structure of the South at this time.

As a rule, the Southern man had been a kind master to his slaves.

Conscious cruelty was the exception. The real evils of the system were those which arose from its _un_-conscious barbarism--the natural and inevitable results of holding human beings as chattels, without right, the power of self-defence or protestation--dumb driven brutes, deprived of all volition or hope, subservient to another's will, and bereft of every motive for self-improvement as well as every opportunity to rise. The effect of this upon the dominant race was to fix in their minds, with the strength of an absorbing pa.s.sion, the idea of their own innate and unimpeachable superiority, of the unalterable inferiority of the slave-race, of the infinite distance between the two, and of the depth of debas.e.m.e.nt implied by placing the two races, in any respect, on the same level. The Southern mind had no antipathy to the negro in a menial or servile relation. On the contrary, it was generally kind and considerate of him, as such. It regarded him almost precisely as other people look upon other species of animate property, except that it conceded to him the possession of human pa.s.sions, appet.i.tes, and motives. As a farmer likes to turn a favorite horse into a fine pasture, watch his antics, and see him roll and feed and run; as he pats and caresses him when he takes him out, and delights himself in the enjoyment of the faithful beast--just so the slave-owner took pleasure in the slave's comfort, looked with approval upon his enjoyment of the domestic relation, and desired to see him sleek and hearty, and physically well content.

It was only _as a man_ that the white regarded the black with aversion; and, in that point of view, the antipathy was all the more intensely bitter since he considered the claim to manhood an intrusion upon the sacred and exclusive rights of his own race. This feeling was greatly strengthened by the course of legislation and legal construction, both national and State. Many of the subtlest exertions of American intellect were those which traced and defined the line of demarcation, until there was built up between the races, _considered as men_, a wall of separation as high as heaven and as deep as h.e.l.l.

It may not be amiss to cite some few examples of this, which will serve at once to ill.u.s.trate the feeling itself, and to show the steps in its progress.

1. It was held by our highest judicial tribunal that the phrase "we the people," in the Declaration of Independence, did not include slaves, who were excluded from the inherent rights recited therein and accounted divine and inalienable, embracing, of course, the right of self-government, which rested on the others as substantial premises.

2. The right or privilege, whichever it may be, of intermarriage with the dominant race was prohibited to the African in all the States, both free and slave, and, for all legal purposes, that man was accounted "colored" who had one-sixteenth of African blood.

3. The common-law right of self-defence was gradually reduced by legal subtlety, in the slave States, until only the merest shred remained to the African, while the lightest word of disobedience or gesture of disrespect from him, justified an a.s.sault on the part of the white man.

4. Early in the present century it was made a crime in all the States of the South to teach a slave to read, the free blacks were disfranchised, and the most stringent restraining statutes extended over them, including the prohibition of public a.s.sembly, even for divine wors.h.i.+p, unless a white man were present.

5. Emanc.i.p.ation was not allowed except by decree of a court of record after tedious formality and the a.s.sumption of onerous responsibilities on the part of the master; and it was absolutely forbidden to be done by testament.

6. As indicative of the fact that this antipathy was directed against the colored man as a free agent, a man, solely, may be cited the well-known fact of the enormous admixture of the races by illicit commerce at the South, and the further fact that this was, in very large measure, consequent upon the conduct of the most refined and cultivated elements of Southern life. As a thing, an animal, a mere existence, or as the servant of his desire and instrument of his advancement, the Southern Caucasian had no antipathy to the colored race. As one to serve, to nurse, to minister to his will and pleasure, he appreciated and approved of the African to the utmost extent.

7. Every exercise of manly right, sentiment, or inclination, on the part of the negro, was rigorously repressed. To attempt to escape was a capital crime if repeated once or twice; to urge others to escape was also capitally punishable; to learn to read, to claim the rights of property, to speak insolently, to meet for prayer without the sanction of the white man's presence, were all offences against the law; and in this case, as in most others, the law was an index as well as the source of a public sentiment, which grew step by step with its progress in unconscious barbarity.

8. Perhaps the best possible indication of the force of this sentiment, in its ripened and intensest state, is afforded by the course of the Confederate Government in regard to the proposal that it should arm the slaves. In the very crisis of the struggle, when the pa.s.sions of the combatants were at fever heat, this proposition was made. There was no serious question as to the efficiency or faithfulness of the slaves. The masters did not doubt that, if armed, with the promise of freedom extended to them, they would prove most effective allies, and would secure to the Confederacy that autonomy which few thoughtful men at that time believed it possible to achieve by any other means. Such was the intensity of this sentiment, however, that it was admitted to be impossible to hold the Southern soldiery in the field should this measure be adopted. So that the Confederacy, rather than surrender a t.i.the of its prejudice against the negro _as a man_, rather than owe its life to him, serving in the capacity of a soldier, chose to suffer defeat and overthrow. The African might raise the food, build the breastworks, and do aught of menial service or mere manual labor required for the support of the Confederacy, without objection or demurrer on the part of any; but they would rather surrender all that they had fought so long and so bravely to secure, rather than admit, even by inference, his equal manhood or his fitness for the duty and the danger of a soldier's life. It was a grand stubborness, a magnificent adherence to an adopted and declared principle, which loses nothing of its grandeur from the fact that we may believe the principle to have been erroneous.