As the poor officer of the day goes out, the heavens seem to be peopled with threatening brigade commanders, andthe earth to be a wilderness of unexplored and thorny responsibilities.
"Well, Mr. Brayton, what was the cause of the firing?" inquired Carter one midnight, when the Aid returned from an expedition of inquiry.
"A sentinel of the Ninth shot a man dead, sir, for neglecting to halt when challenged."
"Good, by" (this and that), exclaimed the Colonel. "Those fellows are redeeming themselves. It used to be the meanest regiment for guard duty in the brigade. But this is the second man the Ninth fellows have shot within a week. By" (that and the other) "they are learning their business. What is the sentinel's name, Mr. Brayton?"
"Private Henry Brown, Company I. The same man, sir, that was punished the other day for firing off his rifle without orders."
"Ah, by Jove! he has learned something—learned to do as he is told. Mr. Brayton, I wish you would go to the Colonel of the Ninth in the morning, and request him from me to make Brown a corporal at the first opportunity. Ask him also to give the man a good word in an order, to be read before the regiment at dress parade to-morrow. By the way, who was the fellow who was shot?"
"Private Murphy of the Ninth, who had been to Thibodeaux and over-stayed his pass. He was probably drunk, sir—he had a half-empty bottle of whiskey in his pocket."
"Bully for him—he died happy," laughed the Colonel. "You can go to bed now, Mr. Brayton. Much obliged to you."
A few days later the brigade commander looked over the proceedings of the court-martial which he had convened, and threw down the manuscript with an oath.
"What a stupid—what a cursedly stupid record! Orderly, give my compliments to Major Jackson, and request him" (here he rises to a roar) "to report here immediately."
Picking up the manuscript, he annotated it in pencil until Major Jackson was announced.
"My God, sir!" he then broke out. "Is that your style of conducting a court-martial? This record is a disgrace to you as President, and to me for selecting you for such duty. Look here, sir. Here is a private convicted of beating the officer of the guard—one of the greatest offences, sir, which a soldier could commit—an offence which strikes at the very root of discipline. Now what is the punishment that you have allotted to him? To be confined in the guard-house for three months, and to carry a log of wood for three hours a day. Do you call that a suitable punishment? He ought to have three years of hard labor with ball and chain—that is the least he ought to have. You might have sentenced him to be shot. Why, sir, do you fully realize what it is to strike an officer, and especially an officer on duty? It is to defy the very soul of discipline. Without respect for officers, there is no army. It is a mob. Major Jackson, it appears to me that you have no conception of the dignity of your own position. You don't know what it is to be an officer. That is all, sir. Good morning."
"Captain," continues the Colonel, turning to his Adjutant-General, "make out an order disapproving of all the proceedings of this court, and directing that Major Jackson shall not again be detailed on court-martial while he remains under my command."
Carter was a terror to his whole brigade—to the stupidest private, to every lieutenant of the guard, to every commandant of company, to the members of his staff, and even to his equals in grade, the colonels. He knew his business so well, he was so invariably right in his fault-findings, he was so familiar with the labyrinth of regulations and general orders, through which almost all others groped with many stumblings, and he was so conscientiously and gravely outraged by offences against discipline, that he was necessarily a dreadful personage. To use thecomposite expression, half Hibernian and half Hebraic, of Lieutenant Van Zandt, he was a regular West Point Bull of Bashan in the volunteer China-shop. But while he was thus feared, he was also greatly respected; and a word of praise from him was cherished by officer or soldier as a medal of honor. And, stranger still, while he was exercising what must seem to the civilian reader a hard-hearted despotism, he was writing every other day letters full of ardent affection to a young lady in New Orleans.
In a general way one is tempted to speak jestingly of the circumstance of a well-matured man falling in love with a girl in her teens. By the time a man gets to be near forty, his moral physiognomy is supposed to be so pock-marked with bygone amours as to be in a measure ludicrous, or at least devoid of dignity in its tenderness. But Carter's emotional nature was so emphatic and volcanic, so capable of bringing a drama of the affections to a tragic issue, that I feel no disposition to laugh over his affair with Miss Ravenel, although it was by no means his first, nor perhaps his twentieth. Considering the passions as forces, we are obliged to respect them in proportion to their power rather than their direction. And in this case the direction was not bad, nor foolish, but good, and highly creditable to Carter; for Miss Ravenel, though as yet barely adolescent, was a finer woman in brain and heart than he had ever loved before; also he loved her better than he had ever before loved any woman.
He could not stay away from her. As soon as he had got his brigade into such order as partially satisfied his stern professional conscience, he obtained a leave of absence for seven days, and went to New Orleans. From this visit resulted one of the most important events that will be recorded in the present history. I shall hurry over the particulars, because to me the circumstance is not an agreeable one. Having from my first acquaintance with Miss Ravenel entertained a fondness for her, I never could fancy this match of hers with such a dubious person asColonel Carter, who is quite capable of making her very unhappy. I always agreed with her father in preferring Colburne, whose character, although only half developed in consequence of youth, modesty, and Puritan education, is nevertheless one of those germs which promise much beauty and usefulness. But Miss Ravenel, more emotional than reflective, was fated to love Carter rather than Colburne. To her, and probably to most women, there was something powerfully magnetic in the ardent nature which found its physical expression in that robust frame, that florid brunette complexion, those mighty mustachios, and darkly burning eyes.
The consequence of this visit to New Orleans was a sudden marriage. The tropical blood in the Colonel's veins drove him to demand it, and the electric potency of his presence forced Miss Ravenel to concede it. When he held both her hands in his, and, looking with passionate importunity into her eyes, begged her not to let him go again into the flame of battle without the consolation of feeling that she was altogether and for ever his, she could only lay her head on his shoulder, gently sobbing in speechless acquiescence. How many such marriages took place during the war, sweet flowers of affection springing out of the mighty carnage! How many fond girls forgot their womanly preference for long engagements, slow preparations of much shopping and needle-work, coy hesitations, and gentle maidenly tyrannies, to fling themselves into the arms of lovers who longed to be husbands before they went forth to die! How many young men in uniform left behind them weeping brides to whom they were doomed never to return!
"Brave boys are all, gone at their country's call,And yet, and yet,We cannot forgetThat many brave boys must fall."
"Brave boys are all, gone at their country's call,And yet, and yet,We cannot forgetThat many brave boys must fall."
"Brave boys are all, gone at their country's call,And yet, and yet,We cannot forgetThat many brave boys must fall."
"Brave boys are all, gone at their country's call,
And yet, and yet,
We cannot forget
That many brave boys must fall."
This sad little snatch from the chorus of a common-place song Lillie often repeated to herself, with tears inher eyes, when Carter was at the front, without minding a bit the fact that her "brave boy" was thirty-six years old.
The marriage cost the Doctor a violent pang; but he consented to it, overborne by the passion of the period. There was no time to be lost on bridal dresses, any more than in bridal tours. The ceremony was performed in church by a regimental chaplain, in presence of the father, Mrs. Larue, and half a dozen chance spectators, only two days before the Colonel's leave of absence expired. Neither then nor afterward could Lillie realize this day and hour, through which she walked and spoke as if in a state of somnambulism, so stupefied or benumbed was she by the strength of her emotions. The lookers-on observed no sign of feeling about her, except that her face was as pale and apparently as cold as alabaster. She behaved with an appearance of perfect self-possession; she spoke the ordained words at the right moment and in a clear voice—and yet all the while she was not sure that she was in her right mind. It was a frozen delirium of feeling, ice without and fire within, like a volcano of the realms of the pole.
Once in the hackney-coach which conveyed them home, alone with this man who was now her husband, her master, the ice melted a little, and she could weep silently upon his shoulder. She was not wretched; neither could she distinctly feel that she was happy; if this was happiness, then there could be a joy which was no release from pain. She had no doubts about her future, such as even yet troubled her father, and set him pacing by the half-hour together up and down his study. This man by her side, this strong and loving husband, would always make her happy. She did not doubt his goodness so much as she doubted her own; she trusted him almost as firmly as if he were a deity. Yes, he would always love her—and she would always, always, always love him; and what more was there to desire? All that day she was afraid of him, and yet could not bear to be away from him a moment.He had such an authority over her—his look and voice and touch so tyrannized her emotions, that he was an object of something like terror; and yet the sense of his domination was so sweet that she could not wish it to be less, but desired with her whole beating brain and heart that it might evermore increase. I give no record of her conversation at this time. She said so little! Usually a talker, almost a prattler, she was now silent; a look from her husband, a thought of her husband, would choke her at any moment. He seemed to have entered into her whole being, so that she was not fully herself. The words which she whispered when alone with him were so sacred with woman's profoundest and purest emotions that they must not be written. The words which she uttered in the presence of others were not felt by her, and were not worth writing.
After two days, there was a parting; perhaps, she wretchedly thought, a final one.
"Oh! how can I let you go?" she said. "I cannot. I cannot bear it. Will you come back? Will you ever come back? Will you be careful of yourself? You won't get killed, will you? Promise me."
She was womanish about it, and not heroic, like her Amazonian sisters on the Rebel side. Nevertheless she did not feel the separation so bitterly as she would have done, had they been married a few months or years, instead of only a few hours. Intimate relations with her husband had not yet become a habit, and consequently a necessity of her existence; the mere fact that they had exchanged the nuptial vows was to her a realization of all that she had ever anticipated in marriage; when they left the altar, and his ring was upon her finger, their wedded life was as complete as it ever would be. And thus, in her ignorance of what love might become, she was spared something of the anguish of separation.
She was thinking of her absent husband when Mrs. Larue addressed her for the first time as Mrs. Carter; andyet in her dreaminess she did not at the moment recognize the name as her own: not until Madame laughed and said, "Lillie, I am talking to you." Then she colored crimson and throbbed at the heart as if her husband himself had laid his hand upon her shoulder.
Very shortly she began to demand the patient encouragements of her father. All day, when she could get at him, she pursued him with questions which no man in these unprophetic days could answer. It was, "Papa, do you think there will be an active campaign this summer? Papa, don't you suppose that Mr. Carter will be allowed to keep his brigade at Thibodeaux?"
She rarely spoke of her husband except as Mr. Carter. She did not like his name John—it sounded too common-place for such a superb creature; and the title of Colonel was too official to satisfy her affection. But "Mr. Carter" seemed to express her respect for this man, her husband, her master, who was so much older, and, as she thought, morally greater than herself.
Sometimes the Doctor, out of sheer pity and paternal sympathy, answered her questions just as she wished them to be answered, telling her that he saw no prospect of an active campaign, that the brigade could not possibly be spared from the important post of Thibodeaux, etc. etc. But then the exactingness of anxious love made her want to know why he thought so; and her persevering inquiries generally ended by forcing him from all his hastily constructed works of consolation. In mere self-defence, therefore, he occasionally urged upon her the unpleasant but ennobling duties of patience and self-control.
"My dear," he would say, "we cannot increase our means of happiness without increasing our possibilities of misery. A woman who marries is like a man who goes into business. The end may be greatly increased wealth, or it may be bankruptcy. It is cowardly to groan over the fact. You must learn to accept the sorrows of your present life as well as the joys; you must try to strike arational balance between the two, and be contented if you can say, 'On the whole, I am happier than I was.' I beg you, for your own sake, to overcome this habit of looking at only the darker chances of life. If you go on fretting, you will not last the war out. No constitution—no woman's constitution, at any rate—can stand it. You positively must cease to be a child, and become a woman."
Lillie tried to obey, but could only succeed by spasms.
For some time previous to the marriage Doctor Ravenel had been plotting the benefit of the human race. He was one of those philanthropic conspirators, those humanitarian Catilines, who, for the last thirty years have been rotten-egged and vilified at the North, tarred and feathered and murdered at the South, under the name of abolitionists. It is true that until lately he has been a silent one, as you may infer from the fact that he was still in the land of the living. If the hundred-headed hydra had preached abolition in New Orleans previous to the advent of Farragut and Butler, he would have had every one of his skulls fractured within twenty-four hours after he had commenced his ministry. Nobody could have met the demands of such a mission except that gentleman of miraculous vitality mentioned by Ariosto, who, as fast as he was cut in pieces, picked himself up and grew together as good as new.
The Doctor was chiefly intent at present upon inducing the negroes to work as freemen, now that they were no longer obliged to work as slaves. He talked a great dealabout his plan to various influential personages, and even pressed it at department headquarters in a lengthy private interview.
"You are right, sir," said Authority, with suave dignity. "It is a matter of great instant importance. It may become a military necessity. Suppose we should have a war with France, (I don't say, sir, that there is any danger of it,) we might be cut off from the rest of the Union. Louisiana would then have to live on her own resources, and feed her own army. These negroesmustbe induced to work. They must be put at it immediately; they must have their hoes in the soil before six weeks are over; otherwise we are in danger of a famine. I have arranged a plan, Doctor. The provost-marshals are to pick up every unemployed negro, give him his choice as to what plantation he will work on, but see that he works somewhere. There is to be a fixed rate of wages,—so much in clothes and so much in rations. Select your plantation, my dear sir, and I will see that it is assigned to you. You will then obtain your laborers by making written application to the Superintendent of Negro Labor."
The Doctor was honestly and intelligently delighted. He expressed his admiration of the commanding general's motives and wisdom in such terms that the latter, high as he was in position and mighty in authority, felt flattered. You could not possibly talk with Ravenel for ten minutes without thinking better of yourself than before; for, perceiving that you had to do with a superior man, and that he treated you with deference, you instinctively inferred that you were not only a person but a personage. But the compliments and air of respect which he accorded the commanding general were not mere empty civilities, nor well-bred courtesies, nor expressions of consideration for place and authority. Ravenel's enthusiasm led him to believe that, in finding a man who sympathised with him in his pet project, he had found one of the greatest minds of the age.
"At last," he said to his daughter when he reached home, "at last we are likely to see wise justice meted out to these poor blacks."
"Is the Major-General pleasant?" asked Lillie, with an inconsequence which was somewhat characteristic of her. She was more interested in learning how a great dignitary looked and behaved than in hearing what were his opinions on the subject of freemen's labor.
"I don't know that a major general is obliged to be pleasant, at least not in war time," answered the Doctor, a little annoyed at the interruption to the train of his ideas. "Yes, he is pleasant enough; in fact something too much of deportment. He put me in mind of one of my adventures among the Georgia Crackers. I had to put up for the night in one of those miserable up-country log shanties where you can study astronomy all night through the chinks in the roof, and where the man and wife sleep one side of you and the children and dogs on the other. The family, it seems, had had a quarrel with a neighboring family of superior pretensions, which had not yet culminated in gouging or shooting. The eldest daughter, a ragged girl of seventeen, described to me with great gusto an encounter which had taken place between her mother and the female chieftain of the hostile tribe. Said she, "Miss Jones, she tried to come the dignerfied over mar. But thar she found her beater. My mar is hell on dignerty."—Well, the Major-General runs rather too luxuriantly to dignity. But his ideas on the subject of reorganizing labor are excellent, and have my earnest respect and approbation. I believe that under his administration the negroes will be allowed and encouraged to take their first certain step toward civilization. They are to receive some remuneration,—not for the bygone centuries of forced labor and oppression,—but for what they will do hereafter."
"I don't see, papa, that they have been treated much worse than they might expect," responds Lillie, who,although now a firm loyalist, has by no means become an abolitionist.
"Perhaps not, my dear, perhaps not. They have no doubt been better off in the Dahomey of America than they would have been in the Dahomey of Africa; and certainly they couldn't expect much from a Christianity whose chief corner-stone was a hogshead of slave-grown sugar. The negroes were not foolish enough to look for much good in such a moral atrocity as that. They have put their trust in the enemies of it; in Frémont a while ago, and in Lincoln now. At present they do expect something. They believe that 'the year of jubilo am come.' And so it is. Before this year closes, many of these poor creatures will receive what they never did before—wages for their labor. For the first time in their lives they will be led to realize the idea of justice. Justice, honesty, mercy, and nearly the whole list of Christian virtues, have hitherto been empty names to them, having no practical signification, and in fact utterly unknown to their minds except as words that for some unexplained purpose had been inserted in the Bible. How could they believe in the things themselves? They never saw them practiced; at least they never felt their influence. Of course they were liars and hypocrites and thieves. All constituted society lied to them by calling them men and treating them as beasts; it played the hypocrite to them by preaching to them the Christian virtues, and never itself practising them; it played the thief by taking all the earnings of their labor, except just enough to keep soul and body together, so that they might labor more. Our consciences, the conscience of the nation, will not be cleared when we have merely freed the negroes. We must civilize and Christianize them. And we must begin this by teaching them the great elementary duty of man in life—that of working for his own subsistence. I am so interested in the problem that I have resolved to devote myself personally to its solution."
"What! And give up your hospital?"
"Yes, my dear. I have already given it up, and got my plantation assigned to me."
"Oh, papa! Where?"
Of course Lillie feared that in her new home she might not be able to see her husband; and of course the Doctor divined this charming anxiety, and hastened to relieve her from it.
"It is at Taylorsville, my dear. Taylorsville forms a part of Colonel Carter's military jurisdiction, and the fort there is garrisoned by a detachment from his brigade. He can come to see us without neglecting his duties."
Lillie colored, and said nothing for a few minutes. She was so unused as yet to her husband, that the thought of being visited by him thrilled her nerves, and took temporary possession of all her mind.
"But, papa," she presently inquired, "will this support you as well as the hospital?"
"I don't know, child. It is an experiment. It may be a failure, and it may be a pecuniary success. We shall certainly be obliged to economize until our autumn crops are gathered. But I am willing to do that, if I meet with no other reward than my own consciousness that I enter upon the task for the sake of a long oppressed race. I believe that by means of kindness and justice I can give them such ideas of industry and other social virtues as they could not obtain, and have not obtained, from centuries of robbery and cruelty."
Lillie was lost in meditation, not concerning the good of the blacks, but concerning the probable visits of Colonel Carter at Taylorsville. Affectionately selfish woman as she was, she would not have given up the alarming joy of one of those anticipated interviews for the chance of civilizing a capering wilderness of negroes.
Taylorsville, a flourishing village before the war, is situated on the Mississippi just where it is tapped by Bayou Rouge, which is one of the dozen channels through whichthe Father of Waters finds the Gulf of Mexico. It is on the western bank of the river, and for the most part on the southern bank of the bayou; and is protected from both by that continuous system of levees which alone saves southern Louisiana from yearly inundations. At the time of which I speak, a large portion of the town consisted of charred and smoke-blackened ruins. Its citizens had been mad enough to fire on our fleet, and Farragut had swept it with his iron besoms of destruction. On the same bank of the Mississippi, but on the northern bank of the bayou, at the apex of the angle formed by the diverging currents, is Fort Winthrop, a small star-shaped earth-work, faced in part with bricks, surrounded by a ditch except on the river side, and provided with neither casemate nor bombproof. Ordered by Butler and designed by Weitzel, it had been thrown up shortly after the little victory of Georgia Landing. It was to be within reach of this fort in case of an attack from raiding rebels, that Ravenel had selected a plantation for his philanthropic experiment in the neighborhood of Taylorsville. Haste was necessary to success, for the planting season was slipping away. Within a week or so after the marriage he had bought a stock of tools and provisions, obtained a ragged corps of negroes from the Superintendent of Colored Labor, shipped every thing on board a Government transport, and was on the spot where he proposed to initiate the re-organization of southern industry.
The plantation house was a large, plain wooden mansion, very much like those which the country gentility of New England built about the beginning of this century, except that the necessities of a southern climate had dictated a spacious veranda covering the whole front, two stories in height, and supported by tall square wooden pillars. In the rear was a one-storied wing, containing the kitchen, and rooms for servants. Farther back, at the extremity of a deep and slovenly yard, where pigs had been wont to wander without much opposition, was ahollow square of cabins for the field-hands, each consisting of two rooms, and all alike built of rough boards coarsely whitewashed. Neither the cabins nor the family mansion had a cellar, nor even a foundation wall; they stood on props of brick-work, leaving room underneath for the free circulation of air, dogs, pigs and pickaninnies. On either side of the house the cleared lands ran a considerable distance up and down the bayou, closing in the rear, at a depth of three or four hundred yards, in a stretch of forest. An eighth of a mile away, not far from the winding road which skirted the sinuous base of the levee, was the most expensive building of the plantation, the great brick sugar-house, with vast expanses of black roof and a gigantic chimney. No smoke of industry arose from it; the sound of the grinding of the costly steam machinery had departed; the vats were empty and dry, or had been carried away for bunks and fire-wood by foraging soldiers and negroes.
There was not a soul in any of the buildings or about the grounds when the Ravenels arrived. The Secessionist family of Robertson had fled before Weitzel's advance into the Lafourche country, and its chief, a man of fifty, had fallen at the head of a company of militia at the fight at Georgia Landing. Then the field-hands, who had hid in the swamps to avoid being carried to Texas, came upon the house like locusts of destruction, broke down its doors, shattered its windows, plundered it from parlor to garret, drank themselves drunk on the venerable treasures of the wine closet, and diverted themselves with soiling the carpets, breaking the chairs, ripping up the sofas, and defacing the family portraits. Some gentle sentiment, perhaps a feeble love for the departed young "missus," perhaps the passion of their race for music, had deterred them from injuring the piano, which was almost the only unharmed piece of furniture in the once handsome parlor. The single living creature about the place was a half-starved grimalkin, who caterwauled dolefully at thevisitors from a distance, and could not be enticed to approach by the blandishments of Lillie, an enthusiastic cat-fancier. To the merely sentimental observer it was sad to think that this house of desolation had not long since been the abode of the generous family life and prodigal hospitality of a southern planter.
"Oh, how doleful it looks!" sighed Lillie, as she wandered about the deserted rooms.
"Itisdoleful," said the Doctor. "As doleful as the ruins of Babylon—of cities accursed of God, and smitten for their wickedness. My old friend Elderkin used to say (before he went addled about southern rights) that he wondered God didn't strike all the sugar planters of Louisiana dead. Well Hehasstricken them with stark madness; and under the influence of it they are getting themselves killed off as fast as possible. It was time. The world had got to be too intelligent for them. They could not live without retarding the progress of civilization. They wanted to keep up the social systems of the middle ages amidst railroads, steamboats, telegraphs, patent reapers, and under the noses of Humboldt, Leverrier, Lyell, and Agassiz. Of course they must go to the wall. They will be pinned up to itin terrorem, like exterminated crows and chicken-hawks. The grand jury of future centuries will bring in the verdict, 'Served them right!' At the same time one cannot help feeling a little human sympathy, or at any rate a little poetic melancholy, on stepping thus into the ruins of a family."
Lillie, however, was not very sentimental about the departed happiness of the Robertsons; she was planning how to get the house ready for the expected visit of Colonel Carter; in that channel for the present ran her poesy.
"But really, papa, we must go to work," she said. "The nineteenth century has turned out the Robertsons, and put us in—but it has left these rooms awfully dirty, and the furniture in a dreadful condition."
In a few minutes she had her hat off, her dress pinnedup to keep it out of the dust, her sleeves rolled back to her elbows, and was flying about with remarkable emphasis, dragging broken chairs, etc., to the garret, and brooming up such whirlwinds of dust, that the Doctor flew abroad for refuge. What she could not do herself she set half a dozen negroes, male and female, to doing. She was wild with excitement and gayety, running about, ordering and laughing like a threefold creature. It was delightful to remember, in a sweet under-current of thought which flowed gently beneath her external glee, that she was working to welcome her husband, slaving for him, tiring herself out for his dear sake. In a couple of hours she was so weary that she had to fling herself on a settee in the veranda, and rest, while the negroes continued the labor. Women in general, I believe, love to work by spasms and deliriums, doing, or making believe do, a vast deal while they are at it, but dropping off presently into languor and headache.
"Papa, we shall have five whole chairs," she called. "You can sit in one, I in another, and that will leave three for Mr. Carter. Why don't you come and do something? I have fagged myself half to death, and you haven't done a thing but mope about with your hands behind your back. Come in now, and go to work."
"My dear, there are so many negroes in there that I can't get in."
"Then come up and talk to me," commanded the young lady, who had meant that all the while. "You needn't think you can find any Smithites or Robinsonites. There isn't a mineral in Louisiana, unless it is a brickbat. Do come up here and talk to me. I can't scream to you all the afternoon."
"I am so glad you can't," grinned papa, and strolled obstinately away in the direction of the sugar-house. He was studying the nature of the soil, and proposing to subject it to a chemical analysis, in order to see if it could not be made to produce as much corn to the acre as thebottom lands of Ohio. Indian corn and sweet potatoes, with a little seasoning of onions, beets, squashes, and other kitchen garden vegetables, should be his only crop that season. Also he would raise pigs and chickens by the hundred, and perhaps three or four cows, if promising calves could be obtained in the country. What New Orleans wanted, and what the whole department would stand in desperate need of, should a war break out with France, was, not sugar, but corn and pork. All that summer the possibility of a war with France was a prominent topic of conversation in Louisiana, so that even the soldiers talked in their rough way of "revelling in the halls of the Montezumas, and filling their pockets with little gold Jesuses." As for making sugar, unless it might be a hogshead or so for family consumption, it was out of the question. It would cost twenty thousand dollars merely to put the sugar-house and its machinery to rights—and the Doctor had no such riches, nor any thing approaching to it, this side of heaven. Nevertheless he was perfectly happy in strolling about his unplanted estate, and revolving his unfulfilled plans, agricultural and humanitarian. He proposed to produce, not only a crop of corn and potatoes, but a race of intelligent, industrious and virtuous laborers. He would make himself analytically acquainted, not only with the elements and possibilities of the soil, but with those of the negro soul. By the way, I ought to mention that he was not proprietor of the plantation, but only a tenant of it to the United States, paying a rent which for the first year was merely nominal, so anxious was Authority to initiate successfully the grand experiment of freedmen's labor.
When he returned to the house from a stroll of two hours Lillie favored him with a good imitation of a sound scolding. What did he mean by leaving her alone so, without anybody to speak a word to? If he was going to be always out in this way, they might as well live in New Orleans where he would be fussing around hishospital from morning till night. She was tired with overseeing those stupid negroes and trying to make them set the chairs and tables right side up.
"My dear, don't reproach them for being stupid," said Ravenel. "For nearly a century the whole power of our great Republic, north and south, has been devoted to keeping them stupid. Your own State has taken a demoniac interest in this infernal labor. We mustn't quarrel with our own deliberate productions. We wanted stupidity, we have got it, and we must be contented with it. At least for a while. It is your duty and mine to work patiently, courteously and faithfully to undo the horrid results of a century of selfishness. I shall expect you to teach all these poor people to read."
"Teach them to read! what, set up a nigger school!"
"Yes, you born barbarian,—and daughter of a born barbarian,—for I felt that way myself once. I want you in the first place to teach them, and yourself too, how to spell negro with only oneg. You must not add your efforts to keep this abused race under a stigma of social contempt. You must do what you can to elevate them in sentiment, and in knowledge."
"But oh, what a labor! I would rather clean house every day."
"Not so very much of a labor—not so very much of a labor," insisted the Doctor. "Negro children are just as intelligent as white children until they find out that they are black. Now we will never tell them that they are black; we will never hint to them that they are born our inferiors. You will find them bright enough if you won't knock them on the head. Why, you couldn't read yourself till you were seven years old."
"Because you didn't care to have me. I learned quick enough when I set about it."
"Just so. And that proves that it is not too late for our people here to commence their education. Adults can beat children at the alphabet."
"But it is against the law, teaching them to read."
The Doctor burst into a hearty laugh.
"The laws of Dahomey are abrogated," said he. "What a fossil you are! You remind me of my poor doting old friend, Elderkin, who persists in declaring that the invasion of Louisiana was a violation of the Constitution."
By this time the dozen or so of negroes had brought the neglected mansion to a habitable degree of cleanliness, and decked out two or three rooms with what tags and amputated fragments remained of the once fine furniture. A chamber had been prepared for Lillie, and another for the Doctor. A tea-table was set in a picnic sort of style, and crowned with corn cake, fried pork, and roasted sweet potatoes.
"Are you not going to ask in our colored friends?" inquired Lillie, mischievously.
"Why no. I don't see the logical necessity of it. I always have claimed the right of selecting my own intimates. I admit, however, that I have sat at table with less respectable people in some of the most aristocratic houses of New Orleans. Please to drop the satire and put some sugar in my tea."
"Mercy! there is no sugar on the table. The stupid creatures! How can you wonder, papa, that I allow myself to look down on them a little?"
"I don't believe it is possible to get all the virtues and all the talents for nothing a year, or even for ten dollars a month. I will try to induce the Major-General commanding to come and wait on table for us. But I am really afraid I sha'n't succeed. He is very busy. Meantime suppose you should hint to one of the handmaidens, as politely as you can, that I am accustomed to take sugar in my tea."
"Julia!" called Lillie to a mulatto girl of eighteen, who just then entered from the kitchen. "You have given us no sugar. How could you be so silly?"
"Don't!" expostulated the Doctor. "I never knew a woman but scolded her servants, and I never knew a servant but waited the worse for it. All that the good-natured creature desired was to know what you wanted. It didn't clear her head nor soften her heart a bit to call her silly; nor would it have helped matters at all if you had gone on to pelt her with all the hard names in the English language. Be courteous, my dear, to everything that is human. We owe that much of respect to the fact that man is made in the image of his Maker. Politeness is a part of piety."
"When would Mr. Carter be able to visit them?" was Lillie's next spoken idea. Papa really could not say, but hoped very soon—whereupon he was immediately questioned as to the reasons of his hope. Having no special reason to allege, and being driven to admit that, after all, the visit could not positively be counted upon, he was sharply catechised as towhyhe thought Mr. Carter would not come, to which he could only reply by denying he had entertained such a thought. Then followed in rapid succession, "Suppose the brigade leaves Thibodeaux, where will it go to? Suppose General Banks attacks Port Hudson, won't he be obliged to leave Colonel Carter to defend the Lafourche Interior? Suppose the brigade is ordered into the field, will it not, being the best brigade, be always kept in reserve, out of the range of fire?"
"My dear child," deprecated the hunted Doctor, "what happy people those early Greeks must have been who were descended from the immortal gods! They could ask their papas all sorts of questions about the future, and get reliable answers."
"But I amsoanxious!" said Lillie, dropping back in her chair with a sob, and wiping away her tears with her napkin.
"My poor dear little girl, you must try to keep up a better courage," urged papa in a compassionate tone which only made the drops fall faster, so affecting is pity.
"Nothing has happened to him yet, and we have a right to hope and pray that nothing will."
"But somethingmay," was the persevering answer of anxiety.
As soon as supper was over she hurried to her room, locked the door, knelt on the bit of carpet by the bedside, buried her face in the bed-clothes, and prayed a long time with tears and sobs, that her husband, her own and dear husband, might be kept from danger. She did not even ask that he might be brought to her; it was enough if he might only be delivered from the awful perils of battle; in the humility of her earnestness and terror she had not the face to require more. After a while she went down stairs again with an expression of placid exhaustion, rendered sweeter by a soft glory of religious trust, as the sunset mellowness of our earthly atmosphere is rayed by beams from a mightier world. Sitting on a stool at her father's feet, and laying her head on his knee, she talked in more cheerful tones of Carter, of their own prospects, and then again of Carter—for ever of Carter.
"Iwillteach the negroes to read," she said. "I will try to do good—and to be good."
She was thinking how she could best win the favor and protection of Heaven for her husband. She would teach the negroes for Carter's sake; she had not yet learned to do it for Jesus Christ's sake. She was not a heathen; she had received the same evangelical instruction that most young Americans receive; she was perfectly well aware of the doctrine of salvation by faith and not by works. But no profound sorrow, no awful sense of helplessness under the threatening of dangers to those whom she dearly loved, had ever made these things matters of personal experience and realizing belief.
When the Doctor called in the negroes at nine o'clock, and read to them a chapter from the Bible, and a prayer, Lillie joined in the devotions with an unusual sense of humility and earnestness. In her own room, before going tobed, she prayed again for Carter, and not for him only, but for herself. Then she quickly fell asleep, for she was young and very tired. How some elderly people, who have learned to toss and count the hours till near morning, envy these infants, whether of twenty months or twenty years, who can so readily cast their sorrows into the profound and tranquil ocean of slumber!
By six o'clock in the morning the Doctor was out visiting the quarters of his sable dependants. Having on the previous evening told Major Scott, the head man or overseer of the gang, that he should expect the people to rise by daybreak and get their breakfasts immediately, so as to be ready for early work, he was a little astonished to find half of them still asleep, and two or three absent. The Major himself was just leaving the water-butt in rear of the plantation house, where he had evidently been performing his morning ablutions.
"Scott," said the Doctor, "you shouldn't use that water. The butt holds hardly enough for the family."
"Yes sah," answered with a reverential bow the Major. "But the butt that we has is mighty dry."
"But there is the bayou, close by."
"Yes sah, so 'tis," assented the Major, with another bow. "I guess I'll think of that nex' time."
"But what are you all about?" asked the Doctor. "I understood that you were all to be up and ready for work by this time."
"I tole the boys so," said the Major in a tone of indignant virtue. "I tole 'em every one to be up an' about rightsmart this mornin'. I tole 'em this was the fust mornin' an' they orter be up right smart, cos everythin' 'pended on how we took a start. 'Pears like they didn't mine much about it some of 'em."
"I'm afraid you didn't set them an example, Scott. Have you had your breakfast?"
"No sah. 'Pears like the ole woman couldn't fetch nothin' to pass this mornin'."
"Well, Scott, you must set them an example, if you want to influence them. Never enjoin any duty upon a man without setting him an example."
"Yes sah; that's the true way," coincided the unabashed Major. "That's the way Abraham an' Isaac an' Jacob went at it," he added, turning his large eyes upward with a sanctimoniousness of effect which, most men could not have equalled without the aid of lifted hands, tonsures and priestly gowns. "An' they was God's 'ticlar child'n, an 'lightened by his holy sperrit."
The Doctor studied him for a moment with the interest of a philosopher in a moral curiosity, and said to himself, rather sadly, that a monkey or a parrot might be educated to very nearly the same show of piety.
"Are all the people here?" he inquired, reverting from a consideration of the spiritual harvest to matters connected with temporal agriculture.
"No sah. I'se feared not. Tom an' Jim is gone fo' suah. Tom he went off las' night down to the fote. 'Pears like he's foun' a gal down thar that he's a co'ting. Then Jim;—don' know whar Jim is nohow. Mighty poor mean nigger he is, I specs. Sort o' no 'count nigger."
"Is he?" said the Doctor, eyeing Scott with a suspicious air, as if considering the possibility that he too might be a negro of no account. "I must have a talk with these people. Get them all together, every man, woman and pickaninny."
The Major's face was radiant at the prospect of a speech, a scene, a spectacle, an excitement. He went at hissubordinates with a will, dragging them out of their slumbers by the heels, jerking the little ones along by the shoulder, and shouting in a grand bass voice, "Come, start 'long! Pile out! Git away frum hyer. Mars Ravenel gwine to make a speech."
In a few minutes he had them drawn up in two ranks, men in front, women in the rear, tallest on the right, younglings on the left.
"I knows how to form 'em," he said with a broad smile of satisfied vanity. "I used to c'mand a comp'ny under Gineral Phelps. I was head boss of his cullud 'campment. He fus' give me the title of Major."
He took his post on the right of the line, honored the Doctor with a military salute, and commanded in a hollow roar, "'Tention!"
"My friends," said the Doctor, "we are all here to earn our living."
"That's so. Bress the Lawd! The good time am a comin'," from the not unintelligent audience.
"Hear me patiently and don't interrupt," continued the Doctor. "I see that you understand and appreciate your good fortune in being able at last to work for the wages of freedom."
"Yes, Mars'r," in a subdued hoarse whisper from Major Scott, who immediately apologized for his liberty by a particularly grand military salute.
"I want to impress upon you," said Ravenel, "that the true dignity of freedom does not consist in laziness. A lazy man is sure to be a poor man, and a poor man is never quite a free man. He is not free to buy what he would like, because he has no money. He is not free to respect himself, for a lazy man is not worthy even of his own respect. We must all work to get any thing or deserve any thing. In old times you used to work because you were afraid of the overseer." "Whip," he was about to say, but skipped the degrading word.
"Now you are to work from hope, and not from fear.The good time has come when our nation has resolved to declare that the laborer is worthy of his hire."
"Oh, the blessed Scripter!" shouted Madam Scott in a piercing pipe, whereupon her husband gave her a white-eyed glare of reproof for daring to speak when he was silent.
"Your future depends upon yourselves," the Doctor went on. "You can become useful and even influential citizens, if you will. But you must be industrious and honest, and faithful to your engagements. I want you to understand this perfectly. I will talk more to you about it some other time. Just now I wish chiefly to impress upon you your immediate duties while you are on this plantation. I shall expect you all to sleep in your quarters. I shall expect you to be up at daybreak, get your breakfasts as soon as possible, and be ready to go to work at once. You must not leave the plantation during the day without my permission. You will work ten hours a day during the working season. You will be orderly, honest, virtuous and respectable. In return I am to give you rations, clothing, quarters, fuel, medical attendance, and instruction for children. I am also to pay you as wages eight dollars a month for first-class hands, and six for second-class. Each of you will have his little plot of land. Finally, I will endeavor to see that you are all, old and young, taught to read."
Here there was an unanimous shout of delight, followed by articulate blessings and utterances of gratitude.
"Whenever any one gets dissatisfied," concluded the Doctor, "I will apply to find him another place. You know that, if you go off alone and without authority, you are exposed to be picked up by the provost-marshal, and put in the army. Now then, get your breakfasts. Major Scott, you will report to me when they are ready to go to work."
While the Major offered up a ponderous salute, the line dispersed in gleesome confusion, which was a soredisappointment to him, as he wanted to make it right face, clap hands, and break ranks in military fashion. The Doctor went to breakfast with the most cheerful confidence in his retainers, notwithstanding the idle opening of this morning. As soon as the poor fellows knew what he expected of them, they would be sure to do it, if it was anything in reason, he said to Lillie. The negroes were ignorant of their duty, and often thoughtless of it, but they were at bottom zealous to do right, and honestly disposed toward people who paid them for their labor. And here the author ventures to introduce the historical doubt as to whether any other half-barbarous race was ever blessed and beautified with such a lovingly grateful spirit as descended, like the flames of the day of Pentecost, upon the bondsmen of America when their chains were broken by the just hands of the great Republic. Impure in life by reason of their immemorial degradation, first as savages, and then as slaves, they were pure in heart by reason of their fervent joy and love.
Under no urgency but that of their own thankfulness the Doctor's negroes did more work that summer than the Robertsons had ever got from double their number by the agency of a white overseer, drivers, whips and paddles. On the second morning they were all present and up at daybreak, including even Tom the lovelorn, and Jim the "no 'count nigger." In a couple of weeks they had split out many wagon-loads of rails from the forest in rear of the plantation, put the broken-down fences in order, and prepared a sufficient tract of ground for planting. Not a pig nor a chicken disappeared from the Doctor's flocks and herds, if I may be allowed to apply such magnificent terms to bristly and feathered creatures. On the contrary, his small store of live-stock increased with a rapidity which seemed miraculous, and which was inadequately explained by the non-committal commentary of Major Scott, "Specs it mebbe in anser to prayer." Ravenel finally learned, to his intense mortification, that his over-zealous henchmenwere in the habit of depredating nightly on the property of adjacent planters of the old Secession stock, and adding such of their spoils as they did not need, to his limited zoological collection. Under the pangs of this discovery he made a tour of apology and restitution through the neighborhood, and on returning from it, called his hands together and delivered them a lecture on the universal application of the law of honesty. They heard him with suppressed titters and hastily eclipsed grins, nudging each other in the side, and exhibiting a keen perception of the practical humor and poetical justice of their roguery.
"'Pears like you don' wan' to spile the 'Gyptians, Mars Ravenel," observed a smirking, shining darkey known as Mr. Mo. "You's one o' God's chosen people, an' you's been in slavery somethin' like we has, an' you has a right to dese yere rebel chickins."
"My good people," replied the Doctor, "I don't say but thatyouhave a right to all the rebel chickens in Louisiana. I deny that I have. I have always been well paid for my labor. And even to you I would say, be forgiving,—be magnanimous,—avoid even the appearance of evil. It is your great business, your great duty toward yourselves, to establish a character for perfect honesty and harmlessness. If you haven't enough to eat, I don't, mind adding something to your rations."
"Wehas'nuff to eat," thundered Major Scott. "Let the man as says we hasn't step outyere."
Nobody stepped out; everybody was full of nourishment and content; and the interview terminated in a buzz of satisfaction and suppressed laughter. Thenceforward the Doctor had the virtuous pleasure of observing that his legitimate pigs and chickens were left to their natural means of increase.
Lillie's reading schools, held every evening in one of the unfurnished rooms of the second story, were attended regularly by both sexes, and all ages of this black population. The rapidity of their progress at first astonished andeventually delighted her, in proportion as she gradually took her ignorant but zealous scholars to her heart. The eagerness, the joy, the gratitude even to tears, with which they accepted her tuition was touching. They pronounced the words "Miss Lillie" with a tone and manner which seemed to lay soul and body at her feet; and when the Doctor entered the schoolroom on one of his visits of inspection they gave him a dazzling welcome of grins and rolling eyes; the spectacle reminded him vaguely of such spiritual expressions crowns of glory and stars in the firmament. If the gratitude of the humble is a benediction, few people have ever been more blessed than were the Ravenels at this period.
As a truthful historian I must admit that there were some rotten specks in the social fruit which the Doctor was trying to raise from this barbarous stock. Lillie was annoyed, was even put out of all patience temporarily, by occasional scandals which came to light among her sable pupils and were referred to her or to her father for settlement. That eminent dignitary and supposed exemplar of purity, Major Scott, was the very first to be detected in capital sin, the scandal being all the more grievous because he was not only the appointed industrial manager, but the self-elected spiritual overseer of the colored community. He preached to them every Sunday afternoon, and secretly plumed himself on being more fluent by many degrees than Mars Ravenel, who conducted the morning exercises chiefly through the agency of Bible and prayer-book. His copiousness of language, and abundance of Scriptural quotation was quite wonderful. In volume of sound his praying was as if a bull of Bashan had had a gift in prayer; and if Heaven could have been taken, like Jericho, by mere noise, Major Scott was able to take it alone. Had he been born white and decently educated, he would probably have made a popular orator either of the pulpit or forum. He had the lungs for it, the volubility and the imagination. In pious conversation, venerable air, grandphysique, superb bass voice, musical ear, perfection of teeth, and shining white of the eyes, he was a counterpart of Mrs. Stowe's immortal idealism, Uncle Tom. But, like some white Christians, this tolerably exemplary black had not yet arrived at the ability to keep the whole decalogue. He sometimes got a fall in his wrestlings with the sin of lying, and in regard to the seventh commandment he was even more liable to overthrow than King David. Ravenel had much ado to heal some social heart-burnings caused by the Major's want of illumination concerning the binding nature of the marriage contract. He got him married over again by the chaplain of the garrison at Fort Winthrop, and then informed him that, in case of any more scandals, he should report him to the provost-marshal as a proper character to enter the army.
"I'se very sorry for what's come to pass, Mars Ravenel," said the alarmed and repentant culprit. "But now I 'specs to go right forrad in the path of duty. I s'pose now Mars Chaplain has done it strong. Ye see, afore it wasn't done strong. I wasn't rightly married, like 'spectable folks is, nohow. Ef I'd been married right strong, like 'spectable white folks is, I wouldn't got into this muss an fotched down shame on 'ligion, for which I'se mighty sorry an' been about repentin in secret places with many tears. That's so, Mars Ravenel, as true as I hopes to be forgiven."
Here the Major's manhood, what he had of it, broke down, or, perhaps I ought to say, showed itself honorably, and he wept copious tears of what I must charitably accept as true compunction.
"I am a little disappointed, but not much astonished," said the Doctor, discussing this matter with the Chaplain. "I was inclined to hope at one time that I had found an actual Uncle Tom. I was anxious and even ready to believe that the mere gift of freedom had exalted and purified the negro character notwithstanding uncounted centuries of barbarism or of oppression. But in hoping amoral miracle I was hoping too much. I ought not to have expected that a St. Vincent de Paul could be raised under the injustice and dissoluteness of the sugar-planting system. After all, the Major is no worse than David. That is pretty well for a man whom the American Republic, thirty millions strong, has repressed and kept brutish with its whole power from his birth down to about a year ago."
"It seems to me," answered the Chaplain,—"I beg your pardon,—but it seems to me that you don't sufficiently consider the enlightening power of divine grace. If this man had ever been truly regenerated (which I fear is not the case), I doubt whether he would have fallen into this sin."
"My dear sir," said the Doctor warmly, "renewing a man's heart is only a partial reformation, unless you illuminate his mind. He wants to do right, but how is he to know what is right? Suppose he can't read. Suppose half of the Bible is not told him. Suppose he is misled by half the teaching, and all the example of those whom he looks up to as in every respect his superiors. I am disposed to regard Scott as a very fair attempt at a Christian, considering his chances. I am grieved over his error, but I do not think it a case for righteous indignation, except against men who brought this poor fellow up so badly."
"But Uncle Tom," instanced the Chaplain, who had not been long in the South.
"My dear sir, Uncle Tom is a pure fiction. There never was such a slave, and there never will be. A man educated under the degrading influences of bondage must always have some taint of uncommon grossness and lowness. I don't believe that Onesimus was a pattern of piety. But St. Paul had the moral sense, the Christianity, to make allowance for his disadvantages, and he recommended him to Philemon, no doubt as a weak brother who required special charity and instruction."
Injured husbands of the slave-grown breed are rarelyimplacable in their anger; and before a fortnight had passed, Major Scott was preaching and praying among his colored brethren with as much confidence and acceptance as ever.
The season opened delightfully with the Ravenels. Lillie was occasionally doleful at not getting letters from her husband, and sometimes depressed by the solitude and monotony of plantation life. Her father, being more steadily occupied, and having no affectionate worry on his mind, was constantly and almost boyishly cheerful. It was one of his characteristics to be contented under nearly any circumstances. Wherever he happened to be he thought it was a very nice place; and if he afterwards found a spot with superior advantages, he simply liked it better still. I can easily believe that, but for the stigma of forced confinement, he would have been quite happy in a prison, and that, on regaining his liberty, he would simply have remarked, "Why, it is even pleasanter outside than in."
But I am running ahead of some important events in my story. Lillie received a letter from her husband saying that he should visit the family soon, and then another informing her that in consequence of an unforeseen press of business, he should be obliged to postpone the visit for a few days. His two next letters were written from Brashear City on the Atchafalaya river, but contained no explanation of his presence there. Then came a silence of three days, which caused her to torture herself with all sorts of gloomy doubts and fears, and made her fly for forgetfulness or comfort to her housekeeping, her school, and her now frequent private devotions. The riddle was explained when the Doctor procured a New Orleans paper at the fort, with the news that Banks had crossed the Atchafalaya and beaten the enemy at Camp Beasland.
"It's all right," he said, as he entered the house. He waved the paper triumphantly, and smiled with a counterfeit delight, anxious to forestall her alarm.
"Oh! what is it?" asked Lillie with a choking sensation, fearful that it might not be quite as right as she wanted.
"Banks has defeated the enemy in a great battle. Colonel Carter is unhurt, and honorably mentioned for bravery and ability."
"Oh, papa!"
She had turned very white at the thought of the peril through which her husband had passed, and the possibility, instantaneously foreseen, that he might be called to encounter yet other dangers.
"We ought to be very grateful, my darling."
"Oh! why has he gone? Why didn't he tell me that he was going? Why did he leave me so in the dark?" was all that Lillie could say in the way of thankfulness.
"My child, don't be unreasonable. He wished of course to save you from unnecessary anxiety. It was very kind and wise in him."
Lillie snatched the paper, ran to her own room and read the official bulletin over and over, dropping her tears upon it and kissing the place where her husband was praised and recommended for promotion. Then she thought how generous and grand he was to go forth to battle in silence, without uttering a word to alarm her, without making an appeal for her sympathy. The greatest men of history have not seemed so great to the world as did this almost unknown colonel of volunteers to his wife. She was in a passion, an almost unearthly ecstasy of grief, terror, admiration and love. It is well that we cannot always feel thus strongly; if we did, we should not average twenty years of life; if we did, the human race would perish.
Next day came two letters from Carter, one written before and one after the battle. In his description of the fighting he was as professional, brief and unenthusiastic as usual, merely mentioning the fact of success, narrating in two sentences the part which his brigade had taken in the action, and saying nothing of his own dangers orperformances. But there was another subject on which he was more copious, and this part of the letter Lillie prized most of all. "I am afraid I sicken you with such fondness," he concluded. "It seems to me that you must get tired of reading over and over again the same endearing phrases and pet names."
"Oh, never imagine that I can sicken of hearing or reading that you love me," she answered. "You must not cheat me of a single pet name; you must call me by such names over and over in every letter. I always skim through your letters to read those dear words first. I should be utterly and forever miserable if I did not believe that you love me, and did not hear so from you constantly."
At this time Lillie knew by heart all her husband's letters. Let her eye rest on the envelope of one which she had received a week or a fortnight previous, and she could repeat its contents almost verbatim, certainly not missing one of the loving phrases aforesaid. Through the New Orleans papers and these same wonderful epistles she followed the victorious army in its onward march, now at Franklin, now at Opelousas, and now at Alexandria. It was all good news, except that her husband was forever going farther away; the Rebels were always flying, the triumphant Unionists were always pursuing, and there were no more battles. She flattered herself that the summer campaign was over, and that Carter would soon get a leave of absence and come to his own home to be petted and worshipped.
From Alexandria arrived a letter of Colburne's to the Doctor. The young man had needed all this time and these events to fortify him for the task of writing to the Ravenels. For a while after that marriage it seemed to him as if he never could have the courage to meet them, nor even call to their attention the fact of his continued existence. His congratulations were written with labored care, and the rest of the letter in a style of affectedgayety. I shall copy from it a single extract, because it bears some relation to the grand reconstruction experiment of the Doctor.
"I hear that you are doing your part towards organizing free labor in Louisiana. I fear that you will find it an up-hill business, not only from the nature of your surroundings but from that of your material. I am as much of an abolitionist as ever, but not so much of a 'nigger-worshipper.' I don't know but that I shall yet become an advocate of slavery. I frequently think that my boy Henry will fetch me to it. He is an awful boy. He dances and gambles all night, and then wants to sleep all day. If the nights and days were a thousand years long apiece, he would keep it up in the same fashion. In order that he may not be disturbed in his rest by my voice, he goes away from camp and curls up in some refuge which I have not yet discovered. I pass hours every day in shouting for Henry. Of course his labors are small and far between. He brushes my boots in the morning because he doesn't go to bed till after I get up; but if I want them polished during the day,—at dress-parade, for instance,—it is not Henry who polishes them. When I scold him for his worthlessness, he laughs most obstropolously (I value myself on this word, because to my ear it describes Henry's laughter exactly). For his services, or rather for what he ought to do and doesn't, I pay him ten dollars a month, with rations and clothing. He might earn two or three times as much on the levee at New Orleans; but the lazy creature would rather not earn anything; he likes to get his living gratis, as he does with me. This is the way he came to join me. When I was last in New Orleans, Henry, whom I had previously known as the body servant of one of my sergeants, paid me a visit. Said I, 'What are you doing?'"
"'Workin' on 'ee levee.'
"'How much do you get?'
"'It's 'cordin' to what I doos. Ef I totes a big stent, I gits two dollars; an' ef I totes 'nuff to kill a hoss, I gits two dollars 'n 'aff a day.'
"'Why, that is grand pay. That is a great deal better than hanging around camp for nothing but your board and clothes. I am glad you have gone at some profitable and manly labor. Stick to it, and make a man of yourself. Get some money in the bank, and then give yourself a little schooling. You can make yourself as truly respectable as any white man, Henry.'
"'Ya-as,' he said hesitatingly, as if he thought the result hardly worth the trouble; for which opinion I hardly blame him, considering the nature of a great many white men of this country. 'But it am right hard work, Cap'm.'—Here he chuckled causelessly and absurdly.—'Sometimes I thinks I'd like to come and do chores for you, Cap'm.'
"'Oh no,' I remonstrated. 'Don't think of giving up your respectable and profitable industry. I couldn't afford to pay you more than ten dollars a month."
Here he laughed in his obstropolous and irrational fashion, signifying thereby, I think, that he was embarrassed by my arguments.
"Well, I kinder likes dem terms," he said. "'Pears like I wants to have a good time better'n to have a heap o' money."
"And so here he is with me, having a good time, and getting more money than he deserves. Now when you have freed with your own right hand as many of these lazy bumpkins as I have, you will feel at liberty to speak of them with the same disrespectful levity. Wendell Phillips says that the negro is the only man in America who can afford to fold his arms and quietly await his future. That is just what the critter is doing, and just what puts me out of patience with him. Moreover, he can't afford it; if he doesn't fall to work pretty soon, we shall cease to be negrophilists; we shall kick him out of doors and get insomebody who is not satisfied with folding his arms and waiting his future."
"He is too impatient," said the Doctor, after he had finished reading the letter to Lillie. "Just like all young people—and some old ones. God has chosen to allow himself a hundred years to free the negro. We must not grumble if He chooses to use up a hundred more in civilizing him. I can answer that letter, to my own satisfaction. What right has Captain Colburne to demand roses or potatoes of land which has been sown for centuries with nothing but thistles? We ought to be thankful if it merely lies barren for a while."