Books: The Man in Gray
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Thomas Dixon >> The Man in Gray
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"That's why you must speak for us. Speak in our defense. Speak with a
tongue of flame--"
"I am not trained for speech, Ruffin. And the pen is mightier than the
sword. I've never realized it before. The South will soon have the
civilized world arraigned against her. The North with a thousand pens is
stirring the faiths, the prejudices and the sentiments of the millions.
This appeal is made in the face of History, Reason and Law. But its
force will be as the gravitation of the earth, beyond the power of
resistance, unless we can check it in time."
"When it comes to resistance," Ruffin snapped, "that's another question.
The Yankees are a race of damned cowards and poltroons, sir. They won't
fight."
Lee shook his head gravely.
"I've been in the service more than a quarter of a century, my friend.
I've seen a lot of Yankees under fire. I've seen a lot of them die. And
I know better. Your idea of a Yankee is about as correct as the Northern
notion of Southern fighters. A notion they're beginning to exploit in
cartoons which show an effeminate lady killer with an umbrella stuck in
the end of his musket and a negro mixing mint juleps for him."
"We've got to denounce those slanders. I'm a man of cool judgment and I
never lose my temper--"
He leaped to his feet purple with rage.
"But, by God, sir, we can't sit quietly under the assault of these
narrow-minded bigots. You must give the lie to this infamous book!"
"How can I, my friend?"
"Doesn't she make heroes of law breakers?"
"Surely."
"Is there no reverence for law left in this country?"
"In Courts of Justice, yes. But not in the courts of passion, prejudice,
beliefs, sentiment. The writers of sentiment sing the praises of law
breakers--"
"But there can be no question of the right or wrong of this book. It is
an infamous slander. I deny and impeach it!"
"I'm afraid that's all we can do, Ruffin--deny and impeach it. When we
come down to brass tacks we can't answer it. From their standpoint the
North is right. From our standpoint we are right, because our rights are
clear under the Constitution. Slavery is not a Southern institution; it
is a national inheritance. It is a national calamity. It was written
into the Constitution by all the States, North and South. And if the
North is ignorant of our rights under the laws of our fathers, we have
failed to enlighten them--"
"We won't be dictated to, sir, by a lot of fanatics and hypocrites."
"Exactly, we stand on our dignity. We deny and we are ready to fight.
But we will not argue. As an abstract proposition in ethics or
economics, Slavery does not admit of argument. It is a curse. It's on
us and we can't throw it off at once. My quarrel with the North is
that they do not give us their sympathy and their help in our dilemma.
Instead they rave and denounce and insult us. They are even more
responsible than we for the existence of Slavery, since their ships, not
ours, brought the negro to our shores. Slavery is an outgrown economic
folly, a bar to progress, a political and social curse to the white
race. It must die of its own weakness, South, as it died of its own
weakness, North. It is now in the process of dying. The South has freed
over three hundred thousand slaves by the voluntary act of the master.
If these appeals of the mob leader to the spirit of the mob can be
stopped, a solution will be found."
"It will never be found in the ravings of Abolitionists."
"Nor in the hot tempers of our Southern partisans, Ruffin. Look in
the mirror, my good friend. Chattel Slavery is doomed because of the
superior efficiency of the wage system. Morals have nothing to do with
it. The Captain of Industry abolished Chattel Slavery in the North, not
the preacher or the agitator. He established the wage system in its
place because it is a mightier weapon in his hand. It is subject to but
one law. The iron law of supply and demand. Labor is a commodity to be
bought and sold to the highest bidder. And the highest bidder is at
liberty to bid lower than the price of bread, clothes, fuel and shelter,
if he chooses. This system is now moving Southward like a glacier from
the frozen heart of the Northern mountains, eating all in its path. It
is creeping over Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri. It will slowly engulf
Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee and the end is sure. Its
propelling force is not moral. It is soulless. It is purely economic.
The wage earner, driven by hunger and cold, by the fear of the loss of
life itself--is more efficient in his toil than the care-free negro
slave of the South, who is assured of bread, of clothes, of fuel and
shelter, with or without work. Slavery does not admit of argument, my
friend. To argue about it is to destroy it."
"I disagree with you, sir!" Ruffin thundered.
"I know you do. But you can't answer this book."
"It can be answered, sir."
Lee paced the floor, his arms folded behind his back, paused and watched
Ruffin's flushed face. He shook his head again.
"The book is unanswerable, because it is an appeal to emotion based on a
study of Slavery in the abstract. If no allowance be made for the tender
and humane character of the Southern people or the modification of
statutory law by the growth of public sentiment, its imaginary scenes
are within the bounds of the probable. The story is crude, but it is
told with singular power without a trace of bitterness. The blind
ferocity of Garrison, who sees in every slaveholder a fiend, nowhere
appears in its pages. On the other hand, Mrs. Stowe has painted one
slaveholder as gentle and generous. Simon Legree, her villain, is a
Yankee who has moved South and taken advantage of the power of a master
to work evil. Such men have come South. Such things might be done. It
is precisely this possibility that makes Slavery indefensible. You know
this. And I know it."
"You astound me, Colonel."
"Yes, I'm afraid I do. I'd like to speak a message to the South about
this book. I've a great deal more to say to my own people than to our
critics."
Ruffin rose, thrust his hands in his pockets, walked to the window,
turned suddenly and faced his host.
"But look here, Colonel Lee, I'm damned if I can agree with you, sir!
Suppose Slavery _is_ wrong--an economic fallacy and a social evil--I
don't say it is, mind you. Just suppose for the sake of argument that it
is. We don't propose to be lectured on this subject by our inferiors in
the North. The children of the men who stole these slaves from Africa
and sold them to us at a profit!"
Lee laughed softly.
"The sins of an inferior cannot excuse the mistakes of a superior. The
man of superior culture and breeding should lead the world in progress.
What has come over us in the South, Ruffin? Your father and mine never
defended Slavery. They knew it was to them, their children and this
land, a curse. It was a blessing only to the savage who was being taught
the rudiments of civilization at a tremendous cost to his teacher. The
first Abolition Societies were organized in the South. Washington,
Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Randolph, all the great leaders of the
old South, the men whose genius created this republic--all denounced
Slavery. They told us that it is a poison, breeding pride and tyranny
of character, that it corrupts the mind of the child, that it degrades
labor, wears out our land, destroys invention, and saps our ideal of
liberty. And yet we have begun to defend it."
"Because we are being hounded, traduced and insulted by the North,
yes--"
"Yes, but also because we must have more land."
"We've as much right in the West as the North."
"That's not the real reason we demand the right of entry. We are
exhausting the soil of the South by our slipshod farming on great
plantations where we use old-fashioned tools and slave labor. We refuse
to study history. Ancient empires tried this system and died. The
Carthagenians developed it to perfection and fell before the Romans. The
Romans borrowed it from Carthage. It destroyed the small farms and drove
out the individual land owners. It destroyed respect for trades and
crafts. It strangled the development of industrial art. And when the
test came Roman civilization passed. You hot-heads under the goading of
Abolition crusaders now blindly propose to build the whole structure of
Southern Society on this system."
"We've no choice, sir."
"Then we must find one. Slowly but surely the clouds gather for the
storm. We catch only the first rumblings now but it's coming."
Ruffin flared.
"Now listen to me, Colonel. I'm a man of cool judgment and I never lose
my temper, sir--"
He choked with passion, recovered and rushed on.
"If they ever dare attack us, we won't need _writers_. We'll draw our
swords and thrash them! The South is growing rich and powerful."
Lee lifted his hand in a quick gesture of protest.
"A popular delusion, my friend. Under Slave labor the South is growing
poorer daily. While the Northern States, under the wage system, ten
times more efficient, are draining the blood and treasure of Europe and
growing richer by leaps and bounds. Norfolk, Richmond and Charleston
should have been the great cities of the Eastern Seaboard. They are as
yet unimportant towns in the world commerce. Boston, Philadelphia and
New York have become the centers of our business life, of our trade, our
culture, our national power. While slavery is scratching the surface of
our soil with old-fashioned plows, while we quit work at twelve o'clock
every Saturday, spend our Sundays at church, and set two negroes to
help one do nothing Monday morning, the North is sweeping onward in the
science of agriculture. While they invent machines which double their
crops, cut their labor down a hundred per cent, we are fighting for new
lands in the West to exhaust by our primitive methods. The treasures of
the earth yet lie in our mines untouched by pick or spade. Our forests
stand unbroken--vast reaches of wilderness. The slave is slow and
wasteful. Wage labor, quick, efficient. Our chief industry is the
breeding of a race of feverish politicians."
"You know, Colonel Lee, as well as I do that Slavery in the South has
been a blessing to the negro."
Lee moved his head in quick assent.
"I admit that Slavery took the negro from the jungle, from a slavery the
most cruel known to human history, that it has taught him the use of
tools, the science of agriculture, the worship of God, the first lessons
in the alphabet of humanity. But unless we can now close this school, my
friend, somebody is going to try to divide this Union some day--"
Ruffin struck his hands together savagely.
"The quicker the better, I say! If the children of the men who created
this republic are denied equal rights under its laws and in its
Territories, then I say, to your tents, oh, Israel!"
"And do you know what that may mean?"
"A Southern and a Northern Nation. Let them come!"
"The States have been knit together slowly, but inevitably by steam and
electricity. I can conceive of no greater tragedy than an attempt to-day
to divide them."
"I can conceive of no greater blessing!" Ruffin fairly shouted.
"So William Lloyd Garrison, the leader of Abolition, is saying in his
paper _The Liberator_. And, Ruffin, unless we can lock up some hot-heads
in the South and such fanatics as Garrison in the North, the mob, not
the statesman, is going to determine the laws and the policy of this
country. Somebody will try to divide the Union. And then comes the
deluge! When I think of it, the words of Thomas Jefferson ring through
my soul like an alarm bell in the night. 'I tremble for my country when
I reflect that God is just and that His justice cannot sleep forever.
Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than these black
people shall be free--'"
Ruffin lifted his hand in a commanding gesture.
"Don't omit his next sentence, sir--'nor is it less certain, that the
two races, equally free, cannot live under the same government--'"
"Exactly," Lee answered solemnly. "And that is the only reason why I
have ever allowed myself to own a slave for a moment--the insoluble
problem of what to do with him when freed. The one excuse for Slavery
which the South can plead without fear before the judgment bar of God is
the blacker problem which their emancipation will create. Unless it can
be brought about in a miracle of patience, wisdom and prayer."
He paused and smiled at Ruffin's forlorn expression.
"Will you call your reporter now to take my views?"
"No, sir," the planter growled. "I've changed my mind."
The Colonel laughed softly.
"I thought you might."
Ruffin gazed in silence through the window at the blinking lights in
Washington, turned and looked moodily at his calm host. He spoke in a
slow, dreamy monotone, his eyes on space seeing nothing:
"Colonel Lee, this country is hell bent and hell bound. I can see no
hope for it."
Lee lifted his head with firm faith.
"Ruffin, this country is in God's hands--and He will do what's right--"
"That's just what I'm afraid, sir!" Ruffin mused. "Oh, no--I--don't mean
that exactly. I mean that we must anticipate--"
"The wisdom of God?"
"That we must prepare to meet our enemies, sir."
"I agree with you. And I'm going to do it. I've been doing a lot of
thinking and _soul_ searching since you gave me this troublesome book to
read--"
He stopped short, rose and drew the old-fashioned bell cord.
Ben appeared in full blue cloth and brass buttons, on duty again as
butler.
"Yassah--"
"I'm glad to see you, Ben. You're feeling yourself again?"
"Yassah. Praise God, I'se back at my place once mo', sah."
The master lifted his hand in warning.
"Take care of yourself now. No more risks. You're not as young as you
once were."
"Thankee, sah."
"Ask Mrs. Lee to bring me the document on my desk. Find Sam and fetch
him here."
Ben bowed.
"Yassah. Right away, sah."
Lee turned to his guest genially.
"I'm going to ask you to witness what I'm about to do, Ruffin. And
you mustn't take offense. We differ about Slavery and politics in the
abstract, but whatever our differences on the surface, you are an old
Virginia planter and I trust we shall always be friends."
The two men clasped hands and Ruffin spoke with deep emotion.
"I am honored in your friendship, Colonel Lee. However I may differ with
you about the Union, we agree on one thing, that the old Dominion is the
noblest state on which the sun has ever shown!"
Lee closed his eyes as if in prayer.
"On that we are one. Old Virginia, the mother of Presidents and of
states, as I leave her soil I humbly pray that God's blessings may ever
rest upon her!"
"So say I, sir," Ruffin responded heartily. "And I'll try to do the
cussin' for her while you do the praying."
Mrs. Lee entered and handed to her husband a folded document, as Ben
came from the kitchen with Sam, who bowed and grinned to every one in
the room.
Lee spoke in low tones to his wife.
"Ask the young people to come in for a moment, my dear."
Mrs. Lee crossed quickly to the library door and called:
"Come in, children, Colonel Lee wishes to see you all."
Mary, Stuart, Custis, Phil, Robbie and Sid pressed into the hall in
curious, expectant mood. Mrs. Marshall knew that Ruffin was still there,
but her curiosity got the better of her aversion. She followed the
children, only to run squarely into Ruffin.
He was about to speak in his politest manner when she stiffened and
passed him.
Ruffin's eye twinkled. He knew that she saw him. She hated him for
his political views. She also knew that he hated her husband, Judge
Marshall, with equal cordiality. His pride was too great to feel the
slightest hurt at her attempt to ignore him. She was a fanatic on the
subject of the Union. All right, he was a fanatic on the idea of an
independent South. They were even. Let it be so.
With a toss of his head, he turned toward Lee who had seated himself at
the table behind the couch.
The children were chatting and laughing as they entered. A sudden hush
fell on them as they caught the serious look on the Colonel's face. He
was writing rapidly. He stopped and fixed a seal on the paper which he
held in his hand. He read it carefully, lifted his eyes to the group
that had drawn near and said:
"Children, my good friend, Mr. Ruffin, has called to-day to bid us
God-speed on our journey North. And he has asked me to answer _Uncle
Tom's Cabin_. I've called you to witness the only answer I know how to
make at this moment."
He paused and turned toward Sam.
"Come here, Sam."
The young negro rolled his eyes in excited wonder about the room and
laughed softly at nothing as he approached the table.
"Yassah, Marse Robert."
"How old are you, Sam?"
"Des twenty, sah."
"I had meant to wait until you were twenty-one for this, but I have
decided to act to-day. You will arrange to leave here and go with us as
far as New York."
The negro bowed gratefully.
"Yassah, thankee sah, I sho did want ter go norf wid you, sah, but I
hated to axe ye."
Lee handed Sam the document.
"You will go with me a free man, my boy. You are the only slave I yet
hold in my own right. I have just given you your deed of emancipation.
From this hour you are your own master. May God bless you and keep you
in health and strength and give you long life and much happiness."
Sam stared at the paper and then at the kindly eyes of his old master. A
sob caught his voice as he stammered:
"May God bless you, Marse Robert--"
Ben lifted his hands in benediction and his voice rang in the solemn
cadence of the prophet and seer:
"And let the glory of His face shine upon him forever!"
Mrs. Marshall stooped and kissed her brother.
"You're a true son of Virginia, Robert, in this beautiful answer you
make to-day to all our enemies."
She rose and faced Ruffin with square antagonism.
Lee turned to the old butler.
"And Ben, tell all our servants of the estate that, under the will of
Mrs. Lee's father I will in due time set them free. I would do so to-day
if the will had not fixed the date."
Ben bowed gravely.
"I'se proud to be your servant, Marse Robert and Missis, and when
my freedom comes frum yo' hands, I'll be prouder still to serve you
always."
With head erect Ben proudly led the dazed young freedman from the hall
to the kitchen where his reception was one of mixed wonder and pity.
There fell a moment's awkward silence, broken at last by Stuart's clear,
boyish voice. He saw Ruffin's embarrassment. He knew the man's fiery
temper and wondered at his restraint.
"Well, Mr. Ruffin," Stuart began, "we may not see as clearly as Colonel
Lee to-day, but he's my commander, sir, and I'll say he's right."
Ruffin faced Lee with a look of uncompromising antagonism and fairly
shot his words.
"And for the millions of the South, I say he's wrong. There's a time
for all things. And this is not the time for such an act. From the
appearance of this book you can rest assured the emancipation of slaves
in the South will cease. We will never be bullied into freeing our
slaves by slander and insult. Colonel Lee's example will not be
followed. The fanatics of the North have begun to spit on our faces.
There's but one answer to an insult--and that's a blow!"
Lee stepped close to the planter, laid one hand gently on his shoulder,
searched his angry eyes for a moment and slowly said:
"And thrice is he armed, my friend, who hath his quarrel just. I set my
house in order before the first blow falls."
Ruffin smiled and threw off the ugly strain.
"I'm sorry, sir," he said with friendly indifference, "that my mission
has been a failure."
"And I'm sorry we can't agree."
"I won't be able to stay to dinner, Mrs. Lee, and I bid you all good
evening."
With a wave of his hand in a gesture behind which lurked the tingling of
taut nerves, he turned and left.
The beat of his horse's hoof echoed down the road with a sharp, angry
crack.
CHAPTER IX
On Sunday the whole plantation went to Church. The negroes sat in the
gallery and listened with rapt attention to the service. They joined its
ritual and its songs with their white folks in equal sincerity and more
profound emotion.
At the crossroads the stream of carriages, carts and buggies and
horseback riders parted. To the right, the way led to the Episcopal
Church, the old English establishment of the State, long since
separated from secular authority, yet still bearing the seal of county
aristocracy. Colonel Lee was a devout member of this church. Mrs. Lee
was the inspiration of its charities and the soul of its activities.
A few of the negroes of the estate attended it with the master and
mistress of Arlington. By far the larger number turned to the left at
the cross roads and found their way to the Antioch Baptist Church. The
simplicity of its service, the fervor of its singing, and above all
the emotional call of its revivals which swept the country each summer
appealed to the warm-hearted Africans. They took to the Baptist and
Methodist churches as ducks to water. The master made no objection to
the exercise of their right to worship God as their consciences called.
He encouraged their own preachers to hold weekly prayer meetings and
exhort his people in the assembling places of the servants.
Nor did he object to the dance which Sam, who was an Episcopalian,
invariably organized on the nights following prayer and exhortation.
This last Sunday was one of tender farewells to friends and neighbors.
They crowded about the Colonel after the services. They wished him
health and happiness and success in his new work.
The last greeting he got from an old bent neighbor of ninety years. It
brought a cloud to his brow. All day and into the night the thought
persisted and its shadow chilled the hours of his departure. James
Nelson was his name, of the ancient family of the Nelsons of Yorktown.
He held Lee's hand a long time and blinked at him with a pair of keen,
piercing eyes--keen from a spiritual light that burned within. He spoke
in painful deliberation as if he were translating a message.
"I am glad you are going to West Point, Colonel Lee. You will have time
for thinking. You will have time to study the art of war as great minds
must study it alone if they lead armies to victory. Generals are not
developed in the saddle on our plains fighting savages. Our country is
going to need a leader of supreme genius. I saw him in a vision, the
night I read in the _Richmond Enquirer_ that you had been called to West
Point. I shall not see you again. I am walking now into the sunset.
Soon the shadows will enfold me and I shall sleep the long sleep. I am
content. I have lived. I have loved. I have succeeded and failed. I have
swept the gamut of human passion and human emotion. I have no right to
more. Yet I envy you the glory of manhood in the crisis that is coming.
May the God of our fathers keep you and teach you and bless you is my
prayer."
Lee was too deeply moved for words to reply. He pressed his old friend's
hand, held it in silence and turned away.
The young people rode horseback. Never in his life had Phil seen
anything to equal the easy grace with which these Southern girls sat
their horses. Their mothers before them had been born in the saddle.
Their ease, their grace was not an acquirement of the teacher. It was
bred in the bone.
When a boy challenged a girl for a race, the challenge was instantly
accepted. Their saddles were made of the finest leather which the best
saddle makers of England and America could find. Their girths were set
with double silver buckles. A saddle never turned.
When the long procession reached the gates of Arlington, it seemed to
Phil that half the congregation were going to stop for dinner. A large
part of them did. Every friend and neighbor who pressed Colonel Lee's
hand, or the hand of his wife, had been invited.
When they reached the Hall and Library to talk, their conversation
covered a wide range of interest. The one topic tabooed was scandal.
It might be whispered behind closed doors. It was never the subject of
conversation in an assembly of friends and neighbors in the home. They
talked of the rich harvest. They discussed the changes in the fortunes
of their mutual friends. They had begun to demand better roads. They
discussed the affairs of the County, the Church, the State. The ladies
chatted of fashions, of course. But they also discussed the latest
novels of George Eliot with keen interest and true insight into their
significance in the development of English literature. They knew their
Dickens, Thackeray and Scott almost by heart--especially Scott. They
expressed their opinions of the daring work of the new author with
enthusiasm. Some approved; others had doubts. They did not yet know that
George Eliot was a woman.
The chief topic of conversation among the men was politics, State and
National. The problems of the British Empire came in for a share of the
discussion. These men not only read Burke and Hume, Dickens and Scott,
they read the newspapers of England and they kept up with the program of
English political parties as their fathers had. And they quoted their
opinions as authority for a younger generation. On the shelves of the
library could be seen the classics in sober bindings and sprinkled with
them a few French authors of distinction.
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