CHAPTER XXIII
“It’s going to be a good speech, Horace, and it will surely attract attention,” said Rhoda Ware to her counsel on the day before the opening of her trial.
Hardaker had just gone over with her an outline of the address he would make in summing up her case. It was intended for the people outside the court room, near and far, who would talk about it and read it in the newspapers, quite as much as for the ears of the jurors. So high and strong had risen the feeling on the slavery question that in some parts of Ohio, as well as elsewhere, the lawyer who devoted energy and ability to the defense of captured fugitives and their helpers could be sure of early and ample political reward. Hardaker was ambitious. He meant, as soon as he could reach an opening door, to enter upon a public career and he had mapped out for himself election to Congress, and after that a steady ascent to high places in national affairs—such a career as, half a century ago, engaged the talents and aspirations of ten times as many eager and capable young men as now think it worth consideration. The fact is an ugly one and not creditable to the quality of our national growth.
But for Horace Hardaker in this present case the spurrings of ambition were only an added incentive. His conviction was profound that slavery was an evil and the Fugitive Slave Act a monstrous law and his desire to oppose either or both or anything that tended to strengthen the institution of slavery amounted to a passion. And, in addition to these motives, his intimate friendship with Dr. Ware and his love for Rhoda incited him to exert himself to the utmost in her defense.
“I hope it will, Rhoda,” he replied, “but I’m doubtful if it will do you any good. Your violation of the law was open and flagrant and we don’t want to deny it or attempt to mitigate it in the least.”
“Indeed we don’t.”
“The decision in the case, then, will depend entirely on the political sympathies of the jury, and the other side is not likely to allow any man on it who has anti-slavery convictions. It would be a victory worth while, Rhoda, if I could get you off! Not only for you, which would gratify me enough, but for the anti-slavery cause! To have conviction refused in a case as bare-faced as this would be a big blow toward making the Fugitive Slave law a dead letter!”
“If I could think,” said Rhoda earnestly, “that any act of mine would help to bring that about, I’d be willing to undergo this all over again.”
He looked at her admiringly and drew his chairnearer, as he said: “Well, you can rest assured that your attempt to help Mary Ellen is having important results. And the waves are spreading out and getting bigger, Rhoda!” Another hitch brought his chair still closer.
“I’m glad of that, and I want you to remember, Horace, when you are making your speech, that you are not to consider me or my sentence at all. Say the thing that will help toward what we all want. Don’t think about me—just think about Mary Ellen and what she was willing to undergo, and all the rest of those poor black creatures that are longing so for their freedom.”
His chair was beside hers now and he was seizing her hand. “Rhoda! Not think about you! How can I help it? Don’t you know I’m always thinking about you and always hoping that some day you’ll think better about what I’ve been hoping for so long? Isn’t there any chance, any prospect of a chance, for me yet?”
She laid her free hand upon his two that were clasping hers. “I’m sorry, Horace! You know how much I like you, how much I prize your friendship—but you are like a dear brother to me, Horace, and I can’t think of you any other way!”
“But isn’t it possible that sometime—don’t you think, Rhoda, that after a while you’ll learn to like me the other way too? You know what Iam, you know how much I love you—won’t my heart’s love draw yours, after a while?”
She shook her head and drew her hands away. “No, Horace, there isn’t any hope, not the least in the world. And I wish, dear Horace, I wish you would put it quite out of your mind. Don’t waste any more time thinking about me. There is many a nice girl who would make you a good wife, and I do wish, Horace, for your own sake, you would fall in love with one and marry her.”
He looked at her searchingly. “When a girl talks that way she really means it.”
“You know I mean it, Horace.”
“I mean, Rhoda, that she knows her own heart, clear through, and feels sure about it.”
“That’s the way I know mine,” she answered softly.
He seized her hand again as he exclaimed, “Does that mean, Rhoda, that there is some one else and that your heart is full already?”
“Yes, Horace. It means that I love some one else so deeply that I can never have a love thought for any other man. I love him with all my heart, although I don’t suppose I shall ever marry him. But I shall never marry any one else, and I could no more think of you or any one else with the kind of love you want than I could if I were his wife.”
There was something like reverence in the gesture with which he put down her hand. “Then that is the end of it for me, Rhoda. Would youmind telling me, is it that”—he paused an instant, supplying mentally the adjective with which he usually thought of Rhoda’s lover—“slaveholder, Delavan, from Kentucky?”
“Yes, Horace.”
He rose and took up his hat. “If that’s the way it is with you,” he began, then stopped, looking fixedly. “Poor girl!” he went on, resting his hand lightly for an instant upon her head. “You ought to have had a happier fate!”
“It’s as good as I deserve, Horace,” she replied cheerfully. Then her face lighted with the glow that had been in her heart since Delavan’s visit, and she went on: “And it might have been so much worse!”
That same glow, as of profound inward happiness, was upon her countenance the next day as she sat in the court room. On one side of her was her father and on the other sat Rachel Benedict, with wrinkled hands primly folded in the lap of her plain gray gown, her kindly, bright old eyes and sweet smile bent now and then upon her young friend as she whispered some encouraging word. Behind her were Mrs. Hardaker and Marcia Kimball and other friends from the Hillside Female Anti-Slavery Society.
In the back of the room, throughout the trial, sat Jefferson Delavan. He was always in his place in the same seat, when she entered, and their eyes would meet once and a faint smile playaround her lips for an instant. Then she would not look again in his direction, but her face kept always its glow of inward happiness.
Horace Hardaker sat with his gaze moodily fixed upon Delavan’s dark head. Jeff’s eyes were upon Rhoda’s face and Hardaker felt resentfully that within their depths must lie some hint of the lover’s yearning. It was almost time for him to begin his address. But his thoughts were not upon what he was about to say nor upon how he could most move the jury. Instead they were busy, with indignant wonder, upon how “that damned slaveholder” had contrived to win the rich and undying love of such a girl as Rhoda Ware.
For the way of a man with a maid is always a sealed book to other men. A woman can guess, or she knows instinctively, how and why another woman has won a man’s love. But the side of a man’s nature with which he does his wooing is so different from any manifestation of himself that he makes among his fellows that to them it is an unknown land. Therefore they are inclined to be skeptical as to its attractiveness.
But Hardaker was much more than skeptical. He was irritated, and even angry, that “such a man as that” should have dared to think himself worthy of Rhoda’s love. And when he presently rose to address the jury the rankling in his heart lent sharper vigor to every thrust he made against the slave power and put into his tones a savageindignation as, with eyes fixed upon Delavan’s face, he thundered his indictments.
An audience of character and intelligence crowded the court room to the doors, while outside, in the hall and around the windows people stood on benches, listening intently, for hours at a time. From all over the county, from surrounding counties, and from as far away as Cleveland, men of substance and of prominence had left their homes and business and journeyed hither to listen to the proceedings and to testify by their presence their sympathy with the defense.
But the pro-slavery side also had its representatives, although in the minority, who were of equal consequence and standing. It was such an audience as would gratify any attorney, wishing to influence the community as well as the jury.
As he rose for his address Hardaker presented a manly, attractive figure and a vigorous, almost a magnetic, personality. Sweeping the court room with his eyes, he waited for a moment and then began with a couplet from a popular anti-slavery song, a song that had roused the echoes in thousands of enthusiastic gatherings, all over the North. No one within the reach of his voice needed any explanation of its meaning:
“’Tis the law of God in the human soul,’Tis the law in the Word Divine.”
“’Tis the law of God in the human soul,’Tis the law in the Word Divine.”
“’Tis the law of God in the human soul,
’Tis the law in the Word Divine.”
He quoted the injunction of the Mosaic law against the returning of an escaped servant andthe commands of the New Testament for the succor of the oppressed, and in vivid language set them forth as the law of the Divine Word, the command of God, and therefore infinitely more binding upon men and women who believed in God and accepted the Bible as his Word than any law made by man in defiance of the Almighty’s command. In a voice that gave full value to its pathetic appeal he told the story of Mary Ellen’s heroic endeavor to escape from bondage and a fate “like unto the fires of hell.” Then he called upon the fathers and mothers of all young girls to tell him if the command of Christ, “Do unto others as you would that others do unto you,” had lost all its meaning, if humanity, Christianity, fatherhood—even ordinary manhood—no longer felt its force. Following the precedent set by a number of lawyers of wide reputation he analyzed the relation of the Fugitive Slave Act to the Constitution and concluded that it violated the rights guaranteed by the basic law of the country, and therefore, since it was unconstitutional, to disregard its provisions was not unlawful and his client had committed no crime.
“This law was passed at the behest of the slave power,” he declared. “It was conceived in iniquity, the iniquity of the South’s determination to put upon slavery the seal of national approval; it was begotten in corruption, the corruption of compromise and bargain; and it was born in thedastardly willingness of misrepresentatives of the people to truckle to Southern arrogance and betray the convictions and the conscience of the North.
“Shall we then, free men and women of Ohio, betrayed as we have been and misrepresented as we are by this so-called law, be expected to cast aside the commands of Christianity and the obligations of common brotherhood, transform ourselves into bloodhounds to chase the panting fugitive and send him back to his chains and, as in this case, to such a hell of lust and vice as all decent manhood and womanhood must shudder at? In the name of all that humanity holds sacred, I answer, no! A thousand times, no!
“The learned counsel for the prosecution has seen fit to sneer at our belief in the higher law,” Hardaker went on, with body erect and hand upraised, his full, melodious, resonant voice filling the court room and the corridors and carrying his words even into the street. “I answer that that law has my entire allegiance and that I stand here to defend and uphold it and to demand the rights of those who feel bound, as I do, by its commands. I feel assured, and you well know, gentlemen of the jury, that I voice the sentiments of thousands upon thousands of Christ-loving and God-fearing men and women when I say that if any fleeing bondman comes to me in need of help, protection, and means of flight, so help methe living God in my hour of greatest need, he shall have them all, even to the last drop of my life’s blood!”
Like the sudden upburst of a volcano, the court room broke into resounding applause. Men sprang to their feet, swung their hats and cheered. Women stood upon benches, waved handkerchiefs and clapped their hands. The rapping of the judge’s gavel and the cries of the officers for “order in the court” were drowned in the uproar and hardly reached even their own ears. Then the sharp insistence of hisses began to be heard. Jefferson Delavan, who had been listening with hands clenched, frowning brows and angry eyes, added his voice to the sounds of disapproval. For a few minutes the tumult continued, and then, at the judge’s order, the court officers began forcing the people out.
They poured into the street and organized a mass-meeting in the square in front of the court house. Numbers of men came running from all directions and while the meeting was in progress word filtered out that the jury had found the prisoner guilty and the judge’s sentence had imposed a fine of one thousand dollars and costs and imprisonment for thirty days.
Resolutions were at once passed denouncing the judge and deciding, “since the courts no longer dispensed justice,” to proceed to the jail, liberate the other prisoners and protect them from theoperations of “an outrageously unjust and tyrannous enactment.”
Delavan, looking on at the outskirts of the gathering, heard the resolutions. He knew that Rhoda would soon be conducted back to her quarters in the jail and he ran thither, hoping to arrive before the crowd of rescuers. In custody of the marshal she had just reached the jail entrance.
“Rhoda!” he exclaimed. “You are in danger here! A mob is coming to break in the doors. Marshal, bring her with me, so we can find a place of safety for her.”
She drew herself up and looked at him with the same pale face and brilliant eyes with which in the woods, so long ago, she had opposed his quest for his fugitive slave. Scarcely she seemed the same being who, only a few days before, had almost trembled into his embrace.
“No,” she said slowly, “these are my people and with them is where I belong. This is where your law has sent me and while I am in its power I want no place of safety. Marshal, take me in!”
The marshal was doubtful, asked Delavan what he meant and what he purposed to do, and while he hesitated the mob came rushing up the street and his only course was to hurry inside with her and bar the door.
The mass of men surged against the jail entranceand with pieces of timber and bars of iron soon forced their way in. Then they trooped through the building, sweeping along all the prisoners who were awaiting trial under the Fugitive Slave law. They urged Rhoda to walk out into freedom and defiance of her sentence. But she smilingly shook her head and told them:
“No, thank you. It’s better to serve out my sentence, and then I’ll be free to defy the law again in my own way.”
Exultantly the throng poured out into the street again with the prisoners, and faced two companies of militia, ready to fire. Even the hottest heads among them paused at this and after some parleying they agreed to disperse and allow the men to be taken back to confinement.
Among those awaiting trial for aiding in Mary Ellen’s rescue and escape were the pastor of the leading Presbyterian church in the town, the superintendent of a Methodist Sunday School, a professor from Oberlin College who had happened to be in the place on that day, a merchant, two lawyers and a physician, together with some clerks, laboring men, a farmer and several free negroes. The day following the conclusion of Rhoda’s trial was Sunday, and the Presbyterian minister preached from the jail yard to a large concourse of people who stood for two hours in a biting wind, for it was now well on in the winter, listening with the closest attention. The sermon,which was mainly an anti-slavery address, added fuel to the already flaming excitement.
Meetings were held and bands of men began to organize and arm themselves. Militia guarded the jail night and day. The pro-slavery sympathizers, though in the minority in this region, yet made up a considerable share of the populace, and, angered and uneasy, they also began to prepare for whatever might happen. To hints that the Fugitive Slave law prisoners might yet be delivered from jail they retaliated with threats that those of their own party who were under durance for infraction of state laws should no longer suffer imprisonment.
So acute did the situation become that Governor Chase hurried to Washington to consult with President Buchanan, assuring him that while he intended to support the federal government, as long as its authority was exercised legitimately, nevertheless he felt it his duty to protect the state officials and the state courts and that this should be done, though it took every man in the state to do it.
Finally, a compromise was arranged by which the federal government dropped the remaining prosecutions for the escape of Mary Ellen and released the prisoners, while the state authorities dismissed the suits against the slave trader’s agent and his companion and the members of the marshal’s posse.
The episode was amicably settled, but the flames of contention had been so fed by it that they mounted higher and higher. Meetings continued to be held all over those portions of the state where anti-slavery sentiment was strong. They culminated, soon after Rhoda’s release, in an immense mass-convention at Cleveland attended by many thousand people and addressed by public men of distinction, where, amid the greatest enthusiasm, resolutions were passed denouncing the Dred Scott decision and declaring the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional and therefore void.
In the pocket of the dress she had worn on the day of her arrest Rhoda chanced to find, soon after this convention, Charlotte’s note telling of her engagement. She smiled soberly as she thought of all the consequences that had resulted from this manifestation of her sister’s puckish spirit.
“If she hadn’t misled me this way,” Rhoda’s thoughts ran, “I wouldn’t have forgotten about everything else the way I did for a few minutes, and I would have kept watch of Mary Ellen and made her keep her veil down, and then that man wouldn’t have recognized her, and we’d have gone right on and nothing would have happened!”
Rhoda’s trial aroused the keenest interest all over the North. But it was an interest that cared only for principles. The personalities of those engaged in the matter were of the slightest consequence. Everywhere, in newspapers and inconversation, there was discussion of the affair, and of the consequences to which it might lead. But the people concerned in it were only so many cogs in a mighty Wheel of Fate, turning resistlessly, and ever about to bring into the present, out of the unknown future, no man could tell what.
To the South and its northern sympathizers the whole affair was irritating and alarming in high degree. Democratic newspapers and their readers declared the attitude of “Chase and his abolition crew” to be equivalent to a declaration of war against the United States and welcomed the prospect, while the compromise by which the difficulty was finally settled they described with bitterness as “another triumph” for the creed of the “traitorous higher law with its open sanction of treason and rebellion.”
But there was one element in the North to whom Rhoda Ware’s share in these events was not a matter of indifference. In the eyes of the abolitionists she was a martyr to the cause to which they were zealously devoted and during the month in which she served out her sentence letters poured in upon her containing money for the payment of her fine and warm words of praise. The Female Anti-Slavery Society of Hillside sent her the whole of their small store, saying, “we shall be proud to share even so little in the martyrdom of our beloved president.” Rhoda wept over it, knowing well at what cost of personal sacrifice the littlehoard had been gathered. But she knew, too, that to beg them to take back their offering would be to stab their very hearts. Other anti-slavery societies in Ohio and elsewhere sent contributions. There were checks from rich men in New York, New England and Pennsylvania, whose purses were always open for the anti-slavery cause and whose custom it was to give brotherly encouragement to Underground operators who fell into the toils of the Fugitive Slave Act by helping to pay their fines. The amount in which Rhoda had been mulcted was entirely paid, as was the assessment in many another case, by these enthusiastic co-workers.
Most precious to her, however, were the letters which came from abolitionists all over the country with their words of praise, sympathy, encouragement and hope. Many of them were from men and women whose names will be found in the pages of American history as long as the conflict over slavery holds a place therein. Long afterward, when many years of peace had enabled all the people of the land to look back with calm philosophy upon those heated years of contention, and the impartial muse of history had given to the Underground Railroad a high place among the causes which brought on the Civil War and abolished servitude, Rhoda Ware held these letters among her most prized mementos of those stirring days of which she was a part.