The Story of the Soil Part 6

"I am only thankful I was there when it happened," replied Percy. "I am sure no man could have done less. I have promised to return to town in the morning to serve as legal witness in the case. I hope your daughter need not be called upon for that."

"Probably that will not be necessary," Mr. West replied.

CHAPTER X

THE SLAVE AND THE FREEDMAN

THE others had retired but Percy and his host continued their conversation far into the night.

"There are almost as great variations among the negroes as among white people," Mr. West was saying. "To a man like Wilkes who was born and raised here on the farm, I would entrust the protection of my wife and children as readily as to any white man. He has been educated, so to speak, to a sense of duty and honor; and negroes of his cla.s.s have almost never been known to violate a trust. Of course there are bad n.i.g.g.e.rs, but as a rule such negroes have grown up under conditions that would develop the evil in any race of men.

"During the Secession it was the most common thing for the men to go to war and leave their defenseless women and children wholly in the care of their slaves; and, even though the federal soldiers were fighting to free the slaves and their masters to keep them in slavery, rarely did a negro fail to remain faithful to his trust.

They hid from the northern soldiers the horses and mules, cotton and corn, clothing and provisions, and all sorts of valuables; and in most cases were ready to suffer themselves before they would reveal the hidden property. To be sure there were masters who abused their slaves, and some of these were naturally ready to desert at the first opportunity; but in the main the slave owner was more kind to his human property than the considerate soldier was to his horse, and the negro as a race is appreciative of kindness."

"I suppose the depreciation in soil fertility and crop yields dates largely from the freeing of the slaves does it not?" asked Percy.

"Well, that was one factor, but not the most potential factor. Much land in the south had been abandoned agriculturally long before the war, and much land in New York and New England has been abandoned since the war. The freeing of the negroes produced much less effect in the economic conditions of the south than many have supposed. The great injury to the South from the war was due to the war itself and not to the freeing of slaves. In the main it cost no more to hire the negro after the war than it cost to feed and clothe him before; and the humane slave owner had little difficulty in getting plenty of negro help after the war. Very commonly his own slaves remained with him and were treated as servants, not particularly differently than they had been treated as slaves. Of course there were some brutal slave holders, just as there are brutal horse owners, and such men suffered very much from the loss of slave labor.

"The southern people have no regrets for the freeing of the slaves.

Probably it was the best thing that ever happened to us; and the South would have less regret for the war itself, except that our recovery from it was greatly delayed by the reconstruction policy which was followed after the war. The immediate enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the negro, especially in those sections where this resulted in placing all the power of the local government in the hands of the negro, was a worse blow to the South than the war itself.

"It is believed that this would not have been done if Lincoln had lived. Lincoln was always the President of all the people of the United States, and his death was a far greater loss to the South than to the North. To place the power to govern the intelligent white of the South absolutely in the hands of their former ignorant slaves was undoubtedly the most abominable political blunder recorded in history; and even this was intensified by the unprincipled white-skinned vultures who came among us to fatten upon our dead or dying conditions. Those years of so-called reconstruction, const.i.tute the blackest page in the history of modern civilization."

"I quite agree with you," said Percy, "and so far as I know them the soldiers of the northern armies also agree with you. Several of my own relatives fought to free the negro slave; but none of them fought to enslave their white brothers of the South by putting them absolutely under negro government. And yet there is one possible justification for that abominable reconstruction policy. It may have averted a subsequent war which might have lasted not for four years, but for forty years. Even if this be true, perhaps there is no credit in the policy for any man who helped to enforce it, but you will grant that there were two important results from those bitter years of reconstruction:

"First, the negro learned with certainty at once and forever that he was a free man.

"Second, he at once acquired a degree of independence effectually preventing the development of a situation throughout the South, in which the negro, though nominally free, would have remained virtually a slave, a situation which, if once established, might have required a subsequent war of many years for its complete eradication. Even under the conditions which have prevailed, there have been isolated instances of peonage in the southern states since the war; and if the education and gradual enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the negro had been left wholly in the hands of their former masters, from the immediate close of the war, I can conceive of conditions under which slavery would essentially have been continued."

"Such a possibility is, of course, conceivable," said Mr. West, "and we must all admit that there were some slave holders who would have taken advantage of any such opportunity; but had Lincoln lived the terms made would probably have been such that the South would have felt in honor bound to enforce them. Probably the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt would have been based upon some sort of qualification such as the southern states have very generally adopted in subsequent years; but the idea of social equality of slave and master was so repulsive to the white people of the South that it could not be tolerated under any sort of government."

"This question of social equality," remarked Percy, "has probably been the cause of more misunderstanding between the North and the South than all other questions relating to the negro problem. I have rarely, if ever, talked with a southern man who did not have it firmly fixed in his mind that the common idea of the northern people is that the negro race should be made the social equal of the white race. This I have heard from southern lecturers; I have read it in southern newspapers; and I have found it in books written by southern authors; but, Mr. West, I have never yet heard that idea advanced by a man or woman of the North.

"Of course there have been visionary theorists or 'cranks' in all ages, and there must have been some basis for this almost universal erroneous opinion in the South that the people of the North advocated social equality or social intercourse between the white and colored races; and yet nothing could be farther from the truth.

In all my life in the North, I think I have never seen a colored person dining with a white man. This does not prove that there are no such occurrences, but it certainly shows that they are extremely rare. On the other hand, in traveling through the South I have seen a white woman bring her colored maid or nurse, to the dining car and sit at the same table with herself and husband. Of course there is no suggestion of social equality or social intercourse in this, but there is a much closer relations.h.i.+p than is common or would be allowed in the North."

"That may be true," said Mr. West, "and there was in slave times a very intimate relations.h.i.+p between the negro nurses and the white children of the South. Some of our people are ready to take offense at the suggestion that we talk negro dialect, and perhaps we would all prefer to say that the negroes have learned to talk as we talk; but the truth is that the negroes were brought to America chiefly as adults; and, as is usually the case when adult people learn a new language, they modified ours because their own African language did not contain all of the sounds of the English tongue. Similarly we hear and recognize the other nationalities when they learn to speak English. Thus we have the Irish brogue, the German brogue, and the French brogue, or dialect.

"The negro children learned to speak the dialect as spoken by their own parents; and as a very general rule the white children learned to talk as their negro nurses talked. So far as there is a southern dialect it is due to the modification of our language by the negro."

"You have mentioned several things," said Percy, "that are much to the credit of the negro who has had a fair chance to be trained along right lines; and I think the modficaton of our language which his presence has brought about in the South is not without some credit. It is generally agreed that the most pleasing English we hear is that of the Southern orator.

"Referring to social conditions, the most marked difference which I have noticed between the North and South, and really, it seems to me, the only difference of importance, is that the South has separate schools for white and colored, whereas in the North the school is not looked upon as a social inst.i.tution.

"As a rule no more objection is raised to white and colored children sitting on separate seats in the same school room than to their sitting on separate seats in the same street car. The school is regarded as a place for work, where each has his own work to do, much the same as in the shop or factory where both white and colored are employed. The expense of the single school system is, of course, much less than where separate schools are maintained; and perhaps an equally important point is that in the single system the same moral standards are held up by the teachers for both white and colored children."

"That point is worthy of consideration," said Mr. West. "It is very certain that a cla.s.s of negroes has grown up in these more recent years that was practically unknown in slave times when white men were more largely responsible for their moral training. The vile wretches who made the attack this evening probably never received any moral training. It is conceivable that the moral influence of the white children over the negroes in the same school might exert a lasting benefit, even aside from the influence of the teacher; and the relations.h.i.+p of the school room could not be any real disadvantage to the white child. But this could only be brought about where white teachers were employed. Some such arrangement would doubtless have been made had the mind of Lincoln directed the general policy of reconstruction; but it is doubtful now if the negro teacher will ever be wholly replaced, although time has wrought greater changes in political lines since the black years of the reconstruction."

"Yes," said Percy, "and those changes which have been brought about in the South have the full sympathy and approval of the great majority of the Northern people. Indeed, it is extremely doubtful if the North will be able to completely banish such a source of vice and corruption as the open saloon until limitation is placed upon the franchise by an educational qualification."

CHAPTER XI

JUDGMENT IS COME

THE G.o.ddess of sleep seemed to have deserted Westover. Adelaide lay in her mother's arms, either awake and restless or in fitful sleep from which she frequently awoke with a m.u.f.fled scream or a physical contortion. Once, as she nestled closer, her mother heard her murmur: "You must pardon me."

Percy, from the southwest room, was sure he heard horses feet at the side gate. The murmur of low voices reached his ear, and then he recognized that hors.e.m.e.n were riding away.

The house was astir at early dawn; and as soon as breakfast was over Mr. West had the colts. .h.i.tched to the "buckboard" and he drove with Percy to Montplain.

"I think your testimony will not be needed this morning," said Mr.

West, "but it may be needed later, and it is well that you should report to the officers at any rate, since you promised to be there this morning."

Percy pointed out the place where the attack had been made, and he looked for a stump of a small tree or for any other object upon which the negro could have fallen with such force as to mash his eye; but he saw nothing.

As soon as they reached the village, Mr. West drove directly to the town house; and there two black bodies were seen hanging from the limb of an old tree in the courthouse yard. Percy noted that his companion showed no sign of surprise; and, after the first shock of his complete realization of the work of the night, he looked calmly upon the scene. They had stopped almost under the tree.

"Are these the brutes who made the attack and whom you captured and delivered to the officer?" asked Mr. West.

"They are," he replied.

"In your opinion have they received justice?"

"Yes, Sir," Percy replied, "but I fear without due process of law."

"Let me tell you, Sir, there is no law on the statutes under which justice could be meted out to these devils for the nameless crime which ends in death by murder or by suicide of the helpless victim, a crime which these wretches committed only in their black hearts--thanks to you, Sir."

As he spoke, the town marshall approached followed by the negro pastor of the local church and a few of his followers. Silently they lowered the bodies to the ground, placed them upon improvised stretchers, and carried them to the potters field outside the village, where rough coffins and graves were ready to receive them.

As Mr. West and Percy returned to Westover they discussed the lands which in the main were lying abandoned on either side of the road.