ABOUT half a mile from Belle Fanchon, on the road that led to Eden Centre, stood a little tumble-down cottage where an old colored woman lived with her granddaughter and grandson.
Cleopatra, shortened into Aunt Clo’, wuz picturesque-lookin’ even in her rags. She wuz taller by far than common wimmen, with a portly figure, that did not show any marks of privation, although it wuz difficult to tell what the family lived on, for it wuz the exception instead of the rule to see any one of ’em employed in any useful labor.
Once in a great while Aunt Clo’ would go out for a day’s work washin’ or cleanin’ house, or any other work she could perform.
At such times, although she professed to have great “misery” in her back, her arms, her legs, and, in fact, “all her bones,” yet she did a good day’s work, but with groanings scarcely to be uttered.
She always seemed serenely gracious in receivin’ anything that Maggie gave her, evidently considerin’ it wuz only her due.
But although her day’s works wuz exceedingly unfrequent, and her granddaughter Rosy and the boy Abe wuz hardly ever seen to perform any labor, yet they showed no signs of starvation, certainly.
As a reason for this state of things the neighbors’ hen-roosts and corn-fields might have given evidence.
CLEOPATRA.
Rosy, the young granddaughter, wuz utterly without morals of any savin’ kind. She wuz rather pretty for a full-blooded African. A empty-headed, gigglin’, utterly depraved study in black.
Not one of the family could read or write, or hardly tell the time of day. Two large dogs formed part of their household, and they seemingly possessed more intelligence than either of the human residents.
Rosy used often to come to Maggie’s kitchen to ask for things they wanted. For one peculiarity of this family wuz that they seemed only serenely performin’ their duty when they begged for anything they wanted.
One day, as she sot before me arrayed in cheap, dirty finery, I said to her:
“Rosy, can you read or write?”
“No, missy.”
“Wouldn’t you like to learn to?”
“I d’no, missy.”
“There is a colored school only a little ways from here, where a good many of your people are learnin’ to be good scholars. Why don’t you go to it?”
“I d’no, missy.”
“If you will go I will give you the books you will want. Will you go if I will get them for you?”
“Yes, missy.”
A most unblushin’ falsehood, as I learned afterwards. For she sold the books as soon as I gave them to her at the little store at the Corners, sold them for a string of yellow glass beads and a cheap cotton lace collar.
And when I taxed her with this, she denied it at once.
And when I told her that I saw the books at the store myself, she said she had lost the books on her way to school, and the beads and collar had been given her.
“’Fore de Lawd dey had.”
What could any one do with such ignorance, and falsehood, and utter lack of principle?
And as Maggie said, “The South is overrun with just such characters as these.”
Not all of them about there wuz so, she said, not by any means; some of them wuz earnest Christians, good scholars, good inhabitants.
But thousands and thousands of those who wuz slaves, bred to concealment and lies in self-defence, taught all kinds of vice by the system under which they wuz born and nurtured, seem to have no sense of what is right and what is wrong; they will steal with no compunction of conscience; lie when the truth would serve them better; will only work when compelled to, and are low and depraved every way.
“What is to be done with them?” sez I. And Maggie said and I thought there wuz but one answer to this, wherever they be, for movin’ their bodies round won’t purify their souls to once nor quicken their intellects imegiatly.
Give them the Bible, teach them, arouse them from the dark sleep of sin and ignorance, learn them to stand upright and then to walk.
Givin’ such men the right to vote and control by their greater numbers the educated race is as simple as it would be to set a baby that had never took a step to runnin’ a race for a prize with an athlete.
The baby has got to stand on its feet first, get a little strength in its soft, unused muscles, then it has got to learn to walk, then to run, and so on; after long patience and teachin’, it can mebby win its race by runnin’ and leapin’; but not at first, not before it can creep.
Why, for a time after I first went South things looked so new and strange to me, and my daughter Maggie wuz so firm in her belief, that I seemed to think jest as she did, and we would talk for hours and hours, and agree jest as well as two human creeters could agree. And I guess I even outdone her in drawin’ metafors, and drawin’ ’em to great distances, as my way is.
For I am always one to speak out and tell how things look to me to-day; if they look different to-morrow under the light of some different knowledge, why, then I’ll speak out agin and tell that when the time comes.
And some of these beliefs Maggie and I promulgated to each other, I believe now jest as strong as I did then, and some of my idees got sort o’ modified down in the course of time. Of this more and anon.
But then Maggie would talk to me, and I’d say to Maggie:
Why, lettin’ such ignorant and onexperienced men rule the country, rule free, educated, cultured men and wimmen, is as foolish as it would be to put a blind man onto a wild, onbroke horse, and tell him to guide it safe when it wuz led right along by pits, and canyons, and kasems and helpless ones and infants are layin’ right in its path, and lots of mean, ugly creeters ready to ketch holt of the bits and back him off out of their way.
Why, that blind man couldn’t do it. Why? because he hain’t got any eyes, that is why.
He don’t know which line to pull on, for he hain’t got no eyes to see which way the danger lays, nor which side on him folks are a layin’ in his track.
He hain’t to blame, that blind man hain’t, nor the horse hain’t to blame, nor the helpless ones he is a tromplin’ over and a stompin’ and a kickin’.
“Who is to blame?” Why, the ones that lifted him onto the horse.
Wall, say some, the blind man wuz lifted onto the horse in the first place to get him out of danger; he wuz jest on the pint of sinkin’ down into the deep mud and quicksand; he wuz lifted onto the horse as a war measure, a way of safety to him out of his danger.
Wall, I sez, that wuz all right; I presume they thought the horse could bear him out safely amongst the pitfalls a layin’ on every side of him, and I dare presume to say they didn’t realize that the man wuz so blind, or that so many wuz goin’ to be trompled on by the heels of the horse.
But now, I say, they have gin it a fair trial, they see it didn’t work; they see that a blind man can’t ride a wild horse over a dangerous road with safety to himself, or the horse, or the helpless ones in his way.
“Wall, what will you do?” you say.
Wall, Maggie spozed the case, and I did; we said, spozin’ the ones that lifted that blind man up onto the horse should take him off on it a spell as easy as they could, so’s not to hurt his feelin’s, and then go to doctorin’ the man’s eyes, to try to get him so he can see; hold the horse for him till he can see; curb the horse down so it will go smoother some; encourage the man by tellin’ him the truth that you are a keepin’ the horse for him, and he is a goin’ to get up onto him agin and ride him as soon as he can see, and the sooner he gets his eyesight the sooner he can ride.
Give him the sure cure for his blindness, and then if he won’t lay holt and cure himself, let him go afoot as long as the world stands.
Give the black man and the poor whites plenty of means for study and self-improvement. Give them the Bible and good schools, plenty of religious and seckular teachers, and I believe they will improve, will become safe guides to foller and to guide themselves, whether in this land or in another, wherever their future may lay.
Sez Thomas Jefferson: “The same rule would work well to the North as well as the South.”
“Heaven knows it would,” sez I. It hain’t becomin’ in us to cast motes and forget beams. Heaven knows that our criminals, and paupers, and drunkards, and the foreign convicts and jail-birds landed on our shores are not safe gardeens to trust our life and liberties to.
This mass of ignorance and vice, native and foreign, that swarms to the polls, bought for a measure of whiskey, ought to be dealt with in the same way.
Men who can’t read the names on the ballots can’t see deep enough into the urena of political life to be safe guides to foller, to be safe gardeens to the helpless wimmen and children committed to their care.
Liberty is too priceless a jewel to be committed into such vile hands, such weak hands, hands that would and do barter it away to the highest bidder.
Liberty and Freedom sold for a glass of beer. The right of suffrage, the patent of our American nobility, to be squandered and degraded for a pipeful of tobacco. The idee!
And kneelin’ in churches, sez I, and settin’ apart in their own homes are royal souls, grand, educated lovers of their country and their kind, who would for duty’s sake reach out one hand to take the ballot, and cling with the other to the cross of the Crucified.
Them who have agonized over the woes and wrongs of the world, and tried with anointed vision to find out the true wisdom of life and right livin’—have spent their whole noble lives for the good of poor humanity—
They must kneel on in silence, and stay in seclusion, and see the freedom of their children and the children of humanity bought and sold, and sunk in the dirt, and trailed in the mire by them who have never given a thought to righteousness and right livin’.
The black man would never have been freed from his chains of bondage had not a necessity arisen. God’s great opportunity comes on down the ages; let us be ready for it. He sees wrongs, and woes, and incomparable sufferings plead to Him for redress.
The heavens are very still. The prayin’ ones hear no reply to their tears, their lamentations, their despairin’ cries.
The heavens are very calm, and blue, and fur away.
But at last man’s necessity, God’s great opportunity comes; the oppressors are driven into some corner by their own deeds, till the only way for them to get out in safety is to answer the prayers of centuries and let the oppressed go free.
Man’s necessity has come; they endure plague after plague, and depend on their own strength and keep up their own proud wills, and harden their hearts, and refuse to answer the pleadings of justice.
But bimeby the plagues increase, their troubles grow greater and greater, they encompass them about, there is no way out only to liberate the great throng that stands between them and safety. And bimeby, when there is a dead one in every house, and weepin’ is on every side, and the mourners go about the street, and the mountains are behind, and the sea in front, and there is no way out only to liberate the oppressed, why, then there is a “military necessity.”
God’s opportunity has come. Rather than perish themselves they will let justice be done, let the oppressed go free.
Now, here is another Egypt. A long-oppressed, ignorant race is set up too sudden as a ruler over an educated, intelligent, intolerant one, for in many places the white race is in the minority.
But it will not yield to the misrule of ignorance.
The white people are bitter, arrogant, and oppressive under their new conditions.
The blacks, nursin’ their old and new wrongs, are burnin’ for vengeance on their oppressors. They will not suffer much longer and be still.
A great struggle is impendin’. I spoze the Nation thinks—and it is naterel for anybody to think—that the black vote cannot be put down legally sence the right of suffrage wuz gin ’em. They think it couldn’t be taken from them for a long time without a war followin’; they think they would fight their way to the poles, and it would seem naterel that they should, sez I, and so sez Maggie.
“Then what can be done?” sez Maggie; and then wuz the time that I sez, and I felt real riz up when I sez it:
There is one thing that might be tried—give the ballot to the white women of the South, and to the black women too, if they can come up to the standpoint of intelligence. Let a certain amount of education and intelligence be the qualification to the ballot.
This is your peaceful passin’ through the Red Sea of the present. The waves may stand up pretty high on each side; loud talk, and fears for womanly modesty, fears for man’s supremacy, fears for the dignity of the ballot will blow up pretty high waves on both sides.
But, sez I solemnly, if the Lord is the Leader, if He stands in front of the army, and it is His hand that beckons us forward, and He who passes over in front of the army, we shall pass through in safety, and the nation will be saved.
The supremacy will remain in the hands of the educated men and women of the South till the illiterates become safe leaders to themselves and others by education and the civilizing influences of the Bible and good teachers.
The supremacy would be taken out of the whiskey bathed hands of the loafer rabble in Northern cities, and remain in the safer hands of educated men and women, till the lower classes rise up by the same safe means of education and enlightenment, when they too will become safe leaders and teachers of the best. And I sez, How will this Nation find any safer means, any fairer way?
It offers safety to the imperilled present, it offers a hope, an incentive for the strugglin’ future.
The poorest boy and the poorest girl would have this hope, this incentive to learn—for the royal road is free for all, beggar or child of wealth. The path opens right up from the alley to the President’s chair, from the tenement to the Capitol, jest as sure as from the mansion house or the university.
It is safe another way, so it seems to me, because it is right and just.
Justice may seem to lead through strange ways sometimes—thorny roads, steep and rugged mounts, and deep, dark wildernesses, while the path of expedience and pleasant selfishness may seem to open up a flowery way.
But every time, every single time, Justice is the safe one to foller. And it is she who will lead you out into a safe place, while the rosy clouds that hang over the path of selfish expedience will anon, or even sooner, turn black, and lower down, and close up the way in darkness and despair.
This seems to me a safe way for the imperilled South while it is passin’ through this crisis, and the light shines jest as fair and fresh in the newer day that gleams in the distance. It is shinin’ in the eyes of them that see fur off, fair and beautiful, the New Republic, where there are equal rights, educated suffrage, co-operative labor. Oh! blessed land beyend the swellin’ waves of the unquiet Present!
Genieve sees it plain, and so duz Victor. And thousands and thousands of the educated and morally riz up of the colored race see it to-day, and are a strivin’ towards it.
