Читать книгу Brother Against Brother; or, The Tompkins Mystery - John R. Musick - Страница 5

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America furnishes to the world her share of politicians. The United States, with her free government, her freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom of press, is prolific in their production. One who had given the subject but little thought, and no investigation, would be amazed to know their number. Nearly every boy born in the United States becomes a politician, with views more or less pronounced, and the subject is by no means neglected by the feminine portion of the community. That part of Virginia, the scene of our story, abounded with "village tavern and cross-roads politicians." Snagtown, on Briar creek, was a village not more than three miles from Mr. Tompkins'. It boasted of two taverns and three saloons, where loafers congregated to talk about the weather, the doings in Congress, the terrible state of the country, and their exploits in catching "runaway niggers." A large per cent of our people pay more attention to Congressional matters than to their own affairs. We do not deny that it is every man's right to understand the grand machinery of this Government, but he should not devote to it the time which should be spent in caring for his family. Politics should not intoxicate men and lead them from the paths of honest industry, and furnish food for toughs to digest at taverns and street corners.

Anything which affords a topic of conversation is eagerly welcomed by the loafer; and it is little wonder that politics is a theme that rouses all his enthusiasm. It not only affords him food, but drink as well, during a campaign. Many are the neglected wives and starving children who, in cold and cheerless homes, await the return of the husband and father, who sits, warm and comfortable, in some tavern, laying plans for the election of a school director or a town overseer.

Snagtown could tell its story. It contained many such neglected homes, and the thriftless vagabonds who constituted the voting majority never failed to raise an excitement, to provoke bitter feelings and foment quarrels on election day.

Plump, and short, and sleek was Mr. Hezekiah Diggs, the justice of the peace of Snagtown. Like many justices of the peace, he brought to the performance of his duties little native intelligence, and less acquired erudition; but what he lacked in brains he made up in brass. He was one of the foremost of the political gossipers of Snagtown, and had filled his present position for several years.

'Squire Diggs was hardly in what might be termed even moderate circumstances, though he and his family made great pretension in society. He was one of that rare class in Virginia—a poor man who had managed by some inexplicable means, to work his way into the better class of society. His wife, unlike himself, was tall, slender and sharp visaged. Like him, she was an incessant talker, and her gossip frequently caused trouble in the neighborhood. Scandal was seized on as a sweet morsel by the hungry Mrs. Diggs, and she never let pass an opportunity to spread it, like a pestilence, over the town.

They had one son, now about twelve years of age, the joy and pride of their hearts, and as he was capable of declaiming, "The boy stood on the burning deck," his proud father discovered in him the future orator of America, and determined that Patrick Henry Diggs should study law and enter the field of politics. The boy, full of his father's conviction, and of a conceit all his own, felt within his soul a rising greatness which one day would make him the foremost man of the Nation. He did not object to his father's plan; he was willing to become either a statesman or a lawyer, but having read the life of Washington, he would have chosen to be a general, only that there were now no redcoats to fight. Poor as Diggs' family was, they boasted that they associated only with the elite of Southern society.

'Squire Diggs had informed Mr. Tompkins that he and his family would pay him a visit on a certain day, as he wished to consult him on some political matters, and Mr. Tompkins and his hospitable lady, setting aside social differences, prepared to make their visitors welcome. On the appointed day they were driven up in their antiquated carriage, drawn by an old gray horse, and driven by a negro coachman older than either. Mose was the only slave that the 'Squire owned, and though sixty years of age, he served the family faithfully in a multiform capacity. He pulled up at the door of the mansion, and climbing out somewhat slowly, owing to age and rheumatism, he opened the carriage door and assisted the occupants to alight.

Though Mrs. Tompkins felt an unavoidable repugnance for the gossiping Mrs. Diggs, she was too sensible a hostess to treat an uninvited guest otherwise than cordially.

"I've been just dying to come and see you," said Mrs. Diggs, as soon as she had removed her wraps and taken her seat in an easy chair, with a bottle of smelling salts in her hand and her gold-plated spectacles on her nose, "you have been having so many strange things happen here; and I told the 'Squire we must come over, for I thought the drive might do me good, and I wanted to hear all about the murder of your husband's brother's family, and see that strange baby and the crazy boy. Isn't it strange, though? Who could have committed that awful murder? Who put that baby on your piazza, and who is this crazy boy?"

Mrs. Tompkins arrested this stream of interrogatories by saying that it was all a mystery, and they had as yet been unable to find a clew. Baffled at the very onset in the chief object of her visit, Mrs. Diggs turned her thoughts at once into new channels, and, graciously overlooking Mrs. Tompkins' inability to gratify her curiosity, began to recount the news and gossip and small scandals of the neighborhood.

'Squire Diggs was in the midst of an animated conversation on his favorite theme, the politics of the day. The slavery question was just assuming prominence. Henry Clay, Martin Van Buren, and others, had at times hinted at emancipation, while John Brown and Jared Clarkson, and a host of lesser lights, were making the Nation quake with the thunders of their eloquence from rostrum and pulpit. 'Squire Diggs was bitter in his denunciations of Northerners, believing that they intended "to take our niggers from us." He invariably emphasized the pronoun, and always spoke of niggers in the plural, as though he owned a hundred instead of one. 'Squire Diggs was one of a class of people in the South known as the most bitter slavery men, the small slaveholders—a class that bewailed most loudly the freedom of the negro, because they had few to free. At dinner he said:

"Slavery is of divine origin, and all John Brown and Jared Clarkson can say will never convince the world otherwise."

"I sometimes think," said Mr. Tompkins, "that the country would be better off with the slaves all in Siberia."

"What? My dear sir, how could we exist?" cried 'Squire Diggs, his small eyes growing round with wonder. "If the slaves were taken from us, who would cultivate these vast fields?"

"Do it ourselves, or by hired help," answered the planter.

"My dear sir, the idea is impracticable," said the 'Squire, hotly. "We cannot give up our slaves. Slavery is of divine origin. The niggers, descending from Ham, were cursed into slavery. The Bible says so, and no nigger-loving Abolitionist need deny it."

"I believe my husband is an emancipationist," said Mrs. Tompkins, with a smile.

"I am," said Mr. Tompkins; "not so much for the slaves' good as for the masters'. Slavery is a curse to both white and black, and more to the white than to the black. The two races can never live together in harmony, and the sooner they are separated the better."

"How would you like to free them and leave them among us?" asked the 'Squire.

"That even would be better than to keep them among us in bondage."

"But Henry Clay, in his great speech on African colonization in the House of Representatives, says: 'Of all classes of our population, the most vicious is the free colored.' And, my dear sir, were this horde of blacks turned loose upon us, without masters or overseers to keep them in restraint, our lives would not be safe for a day. Domineering niggers would be our masters, would claim the right to vote and hold office. Imagine, my dear sir, an ignorant nigger holding an important office like that of justice of the peace. Consider for a moment, Mr. Tompkins, all of the horrors which would be the natural result of a lazy, indolent race, incapable of earning their own living, unless urged by the lash, being turned loose to shift for themselves. Slavery is more a blessing to the slave than to the master. What was the condition of the negro in his native wilds? He was a ruthless savage, hunting and fighting, and eating fellow-beings captured in war. He knew no God, and worshiped snakes, the sun and moon, and everything he could not understand. Our slave-traders found him in this state of barbarism and misery. They brought him here, and taught him to till the soil, and trained him in the ways of peace, and led him to worship the true and living God. Our niggers now have food to eat and clothes to wear, when in their native country they were hungry and naked. They now enjoy all the blessings of an advanced civilization, whereas they were once in the lowest barbarism. Set them free, and they will drift back into their former state."

"A blessing may be made out of their bondage," replied Mr. Tompkins. "As Henry Clay said in the speech from which you have quoted, 'they will carry back to their native soil the rich fruits of religion, civilization, law and liberty. And may it not be one of the great designs of the Ruler of the universe (whose ways are often inscrutable by short-sighted mortals) thus to transform original crime into a single blessing to the most unfortunate portions of the globe? But I fear we uphold slavery rather for our own mercenary advantages than as a blessing either to our country or to either race."

"Why, Mr. Tompkins, you are advocating Abolition doctrine," said Mrs. Diggs.

"I believe I am, and that abolition is right."

"Would you be willing to lose your own slaves to have the niggers freed?" asked the astonished 'Squire.

"I would willingly lose them to rid our country of a blighting curse."

"I would not," said Mrs. Tompkins, her Southern blood fired by the discussion. "My husband is a Northern man, and advocates principles that were instilled into his mind from infancy; but I oppose abolition from principle. Slaves should be treated well and made to know their place; but to set them free and ruin thousands of people in the South is the idea of fanatics."

"I'm mamma's Democrat," said Oleah, who, seated at his mother's side, concluded it best to approve her remarks by proclaiming his own political creed.

"And I am papa's Whig," announced Abner, who was at his father's side.

"That's right, my son. You don't believe that people, because they are black, should be bought and sold and beaten like cattle, do you?" asked the father, looking down, half in jest and half in earnest, at his eldest born.

"No; set the negroes free, and Oleah and I will plow and drive wagons," he replied, quickly.

"You don't believe it's right to take people's property from them for nothing and leave people poor, do you, Oleah?" asked the mother, in laughing retaliation.

"No, I don't," replied the young Southern aristocrat.

"You are liable to have both political parties represented in your own family," said 'Squire Diggs. "Here's a difference of opinion already."

"Their differences will be easy to reconcile, for never did brothers love each other as these do," returned Mr. Tompkins, little dreaming that this difference of opinion was a breach that would widen, widen and widen, separating the loving brothers, and bringing untold misery to his peaceful home.

"What are you in favor of, Patrick Henry?" Mrs. Diggs asked, in her shrill, sharp tones, of her own hopeful son.

"I'm in favor of freedom and the Stars and Stripes," answered Patrick Henry, gnawing vigorously at the chicken bone he held in his hand.

"He is a patriot," exclaimed the 'Squire. "He talks of nothing so much as Revolutionary days and Revolutionary heroes. He has such a taste for military life that I'd send him to West Point, but his mother objects."

"Yes, I do object," put in the shrill-voiced, cadaverous Mrs. Diggs, "They don't take a child of mine to their strict military schools. Why, what if he was to get sick, away off there, and me here? I wouldn't stop day or night till I got there."

Dinner over, the party repaired to the parlor, and 'Squire Diggs asked his son to speak "one of his pieces" for the entertainment of the company.

"What piece shall I say?" asked Patrick Henry, as anxious to display his oratorical talents as his father was to have him.

"The piece that begins, 'I come not here to talk,'" said Mrs. Diggs, her sallow features lit up with a smile that showed the tips of her false teeth.

Several of the negroes, learning that a show of some kind was about to begin in the parlor, crowded about the room, peeping in at the doors and windows. Patrick Henry took his position in the centre of the room, struck a pompous attitude, standing high as his short legs would permit, and, brushing the hair from his forehead, bowed to his audience and, in a high, loud monotone, began:

"I come not to talk! You know too well

The story of our thraldom. We—we—"

He paused and bowed his head.

"We are slaves," prompted the mother, who was listening with eager interest. Mrs. Diggs had heard her son "say his piece" so often that she had learned it herself, and now served as prompter. Patrick Henry continued:

"We are slaves.

The bright moon rises——"

"No, sun," interrupted his mother.

"The bright sun rises in the East and lights

A race of slaves. He sets—and the—last thing"—

The young orator was again off the track.

"And his last beam falls on a slave," again the fond mother prompted.

By being frequently prompted, Patrick Henry managed to "speak his piece through."

While the mother, alert and watchful, listened and prompted, the father, short, and sleek, and fat, leaned back in his chair, one short leg just able to reach across the other, listening with satisfied pride to his son's display.

"The poor child has forgotten some of it," said the mother, at the conclusion.

"Yes," added the father; "he don't speak much now, and so has forgotten a great deal that he knew."

Mr. Tompkins and his wife, inwardly regretting that he had not forgotten all, willingly excused Patrick Henry from any further efforts. And though they had welcomed and entertained their guests with the cordial Southern hospitality, they felt somewhat relieved when the Diggs carriage, with its ancient, dark-skinned coachman, rolled away over the hills towards Snagtown.