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The Sable Cloud by Nehemiah Adams

N >> Nehemiah Adams >> The Sable Cloud




"I look, therefore, toward some change in Northern feelings with regard
to the South. A change in this respect will end our troubles. Opinions
may not be wholly reversed; people born and bred under totally different
institutions may not, for they cannot wholly, yield their convictions on
controverted sectional topics, even when they cherish mutual respect and
deference; but, the belief that the North will change its feelings
toward the South and its institutions, under a modification of views
entirely consistent with independence of judgment and self-respect, and
that the South will not be wanting in a corresponding temper, rests on
the same conviction as that God does not intend to destroy us by each
other's hands, nor to make the life of the two sections weary with
perpetual hatred and strife."

* * * * *

"Our form of government, Mr. North," said I, "is the very best on earth
if it goes well, and the worst if it goes ill. We have no standing army
to fight for an administration as for a throne or dynasty; so that if a
State secedes, the question is how to coerce that people, if it be best
to attempt it. Citizens do not like to march against their brethren.
Think of our taking up arms against our correspondents; against people
that have gone from our churches and settled in that State; against
cousins, and brothers-in-law, and people who lived or did business under
the same roofs with us."

"It is awkward, indeed," said Mr. North, "especially if they simply
withdraw and hold the fortifications of the general government, in their
own territory, to keep the government from destroying their lives."

"Why, yes," said Mrs. North, "it would be simple in them, after
seceding, to suffer themselves to be bombarded. But have they any right
to secede?"

"As to that," said Mr. North, "my mind has been much exercised of late
with this thought: I have always advocated the right of the negroes to
make insurrection, or to flee from oppression. But now their masters
complain of being oppressed by the North. Why have not the masters the
same right to secede from their government as the negro from his?"

"Well, husband," said his wife, "I think that you are getting on fast."

"Why," said I, "Mr. North, is not slavery 'the sum of all villanies?'
Did the negro ever consent to his form of government?"

"Well," said he, "I never consented to be born; I find myself in
existence; I have no more consented to the government of the United
States than I suppose the negroes, generally, have submitted to their
civil condition. My question is, Who shall decide when the Southern
masters say, We are intolerably oppressed; we are under a yoke; 'break
every yoke!' 'let the oppressed go free!' If I interpose and say, 'You
are not oppressed; you are better off as you now are,' is not this the
reply of the masters when we seek to free their slaves? Do we not say
that the oppressed must be the judges of their necessity? And why may I
coerce the master, if it be wrong for him to coerce the negro?"

"I must let you, work out that question at your leisure, and on your own
principles," said I.--"We were speaking of seizing and holding the forts
and arsenals. The French proverb says, 'It is the first step that
costs.' Seceding involves the necessity of seizing the forts. If they
who do this embarrass other persons in their lawful rights, they must
risk the consequences; but if they secede from the government, the
question is, Do circumstances justify a revolution? for secession is
revolution. Is revolution justifiable in the present case?

"But not to discuss that question," said I, "all that I wished to say
was this, that our government seems admirably suited for a people who
will behave well under it. We can take care of isolated cases of
rebellion. But if any important part of the country rises up and
departs, it is exceedingly difficult to know what to do. Prevention is
excellent; but cure is next to impossible. So long as there is a general
acquiescence in the exercise of executive power against
insurrectionists, one or more, we have a general government; but when
States depart, we are a house divided against itself. We find that we
have been living, as it were, not so much under paternal authority, as
under fraternal rule. If broken irretrievably, the alternative is to be
divided, or for one part of the country to coerce its neighbors and
brethren. This we find to be extremely inconvenient and really
impracticable without civil war; and after the war,--whose horrors, in
our case, can never be pictured,--we would either find ourselves in the
same divided state as before, or if politically united, it will have
been effected at a cost which it is fearful to contemplate.

"So that we are illustrating the question, whether such a government as
ours is really practicable,--whether a people can govern themselves.
Already we hear it said, 'We have no government.' The explanation is, We
are not disposed to destroy each other's lives to preserve the
confederation. We can have a monarchy, with its 'divine right,' and with
its standing army, if we choose; or, if we remain as a republic, we must
be liable to just our present exigency. Our only defence, then,
consists in mutual conciliation and agreement.

"What a land this is," said I, "with its diversified interests and its
unparalleled variety of products,--its agriculture, mechanic arts,
science, and literature. Separation will embarrass every form of
intercourse, and make us hostile."

"Jews and Samaritans," said Mrs. North. "And all for an idea!"

"Yes," said I, "and for an idea which to one whole section, and to a
very large part of the people in the other section, is false.--Four
millions of negroes are destroying us. As a foreign writer said, 'In
trying to give liberty to the negro, we are losing our own.'"

Said Mrs. North, "Can nothing be done to save us?"

"Bishop Butler tells us, Mrs. North," said I, "that a nation may be
insane as well as an individual. But reason seems to be returning in
some quarters. Secession and its consequences are having a wonderful
effect to open the eyes of people. John Brown's foray and its end were a
providential demonstration of certain errors, which we may conclude will
not soon be revived. Secession is now leading the world to look more
narrowly into the subject of negro slavery. Let me read to you these
extracts from a recent number of 'Le Pays,' Paris. The writer is arguing
that Europe must recognize the Southern confederacy:

'But in awaiting these results which would flow from the cordial
welcome given by Europe to the new confederation, let true
philanthropists be assured that they are wonderfully mistaken in
regard to the real condition of the blacks of the South. We
willingly admit that their error is pardonable, for they have
learned the relations of master and slave only from "Uncle Tom's
Cabin." Shall we look for that condition in the lucubrations of that
romance, raised to the importance of a philosophic dissertation, but
leading public opinion astray, provoking revolution, and
necessitating incendiarism and revolution? A romance is a work of
fancy, which one cannot refute, and which cannot serve as a basis to
any argument. In our discussion, we must seek elsewhere for
authorities and material. Facts are eloquent, and statistics teach
us that, under the superintendence of those masters,--so cruel and
so terrible, if we are to believe "Uncle Tom,"--the black population
of the South increases regularly in a greater proportion than the
white; while in the Antilles, in Africa, and especially in the so
very philanthropic States of the North, the black race decreases in
a deplorable proportion.

'The condition of those blacks is assuredly better than that of the
agricultural laborers in many parts of Europe. Their morality is far
superior to that of the free negroes of the North; the planters
encourage marriage, and thus endeavor to develop among them a sense
of the family relation, with a view of attaching them to the
domestic hearth, consequently to the family of the master. It will
be then observed that in such a state of things the interests of the
planter, in default of any other motive, promotes the advancement
and well-being of the slave. Certainly, we believe it possible still
to ameliorate their condition. It is with that view, even, that the
South has labored for so long a time to prepare them for a higher
civilization.

'In no part, perhaps, of the continent, regard being had to the
population, do there exist men more eminent and gifted, with nobler
or more generous sentiments, than in the Southern States. No country
possesses lovelier, kinder hearted, and more distinguished women. To
commence with the immortal Washington, the list of statesmen who
have taken part in the government of the United States shows that
all those who have shed a lustre on the country, and won the
admiration of Europe, owed their being to that much abused South.

'Is it true that so much distinction, talent, and grandeur of soul
could have sprung from all the vices, from the cruelty and
corruption which one would fain attribute now to the Southern
people? The laws of inflexible logic refute these false imputations.
And--strange coincidence--while Southern men presided over the
destinies of the Union, its gigantic prosperity was the astonishment
of the world. In the hands of Northern men, that edifice, raised
with so much care and labor by their predecessors, comes crashing
down, threatening to carry with it in its fall the industrial future
of every other nation. For long years the constant efforts of the
North, and a certain foreign country, to spread among the blacks
incendiary pamphlets and tracts have powerfully contributed to
suspend every Southern movement towards emancipation. Its people
have been compelled to close their ears to ideas which threatened
their very existence.'"

"But," said Mr. North, "here we have been, for thirty years or more,
living on an anti-slavery excitement. Grant that it is all wrong; will
you ask or expect that we shall change all at once? in a week? or in a
month? or in a year? We will not kneel to anybody; if we change, it must
be upon conviction."

"I strike hands with you there," said I, "most heartily. Our Southern
friends must understand this; they must now approach us once more with
reason and persuasion. The people at large are in a frame to be reasoned
with and persuaded; for if we can do anything within the bounds of
reason to retain the South in the Union, it will be done. We will say of
concession as the antithesis of secession, as was said of two other
things: 'Millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute.' I think that
both sections need forgiveness of God, and of each other."

"Well," said Mr. North, "after all we shall get along and get through,
even if there should be a separation."

"Mr. Worth," said I, "when you were studying Cicero, could you
understand--for I could not--how he and other patriots could feel so
strongly about the fortunes of their country as to declare--which they
frequently do--that they would rather die than survive their country's
honor? It has come to me vividly of late. I see it and feel it. The
sunshine will seem to have gone out of our life when we become two
unfriendly nations.

"It is easy," said I, "for it gratifies some of the lower passions, to
ridicule a whole section of the country for their act of secession or a
disposition towards it; to boast that the South cannot do without us; to
prophesy that they will get sick of it, and wish to return; to express
wonder that they should feel so much hurt; to remind them that, if they
will do as we have always counselled them, there would be no trouble;
and there is a temptation to say, as friends in a quarrel will hastily
say, Let them go. But when they are irrecoverably gone, justifiably or
not, I tell you, Mr. North, there will be mourning in our streets. I
know, indeed, that there are some among us to whom it will be a
carnival; but--"

"They will have a long Lent after it," said Mrs. North; "pray excuse
me."

"Ties of kindred," said I, "patriotism, Christian friendships, will not
go down to hopeless graves without leaving behind them sorrows ending
only with life.

"It appears to me," said I, "that our ship is where nothing but an
immediate calm and then a change of the wind, can save us. If we become
two nations, it may be for judgment and destruction; and it may be for
some great, ultimate good. But it will be hard parting. To think of
having no South! and of their having no North! We shall each become
provincial. We are wonderfully fitted to qualify and improve each the
other. How strange it would be to have these two sections love each
other! No one among us under twenty-five years of age, has probably ever
thought of us but as in controversy."

"Speaking of Southern life," said Mrs. North, "I have not seen our
friend Grant since he came back from the South."

"I have seen him," said I, "and have heard his story. He made his home
with an old friend, a clergyman. It was known that he was a stranger,
and at once he was made to feel at home by many of the citizens. The
morning after he arrived, Jack, a servant of a neighboring family, came
into the breakfast-room, with a waiter filled with dishes, which he
deposited on the side-board. 'Master and Missis send their compliments,
and want to know how the family is, and how Mr. Grant is this morning.'
Now they had never seen Mr. Grant; but they knew that he had arrived the
night before. 'Well, Jack,' says Mrs. ----, 'I see you have got some
good things for us.' 'O, not much, Missis; but they thought you and Mr.
Grant would excuse 'em for sending it.' So there were deposited on the
breakfast-table, 'big hominy' in one or two shapes, rare fish,
puff-muffins, and several dishes which called for Jack's
interpretations. 'And Master says, shall he send the carriage round for
you this forenoon? and he will call himself.' The evening talk was
interrupted by a black woman, all smiles, bearing a waiter of ice-cream
and other refreshments, from another house; and so the visit was a
succession of surprises from families who, at the South, count each
other's guests their own. Mr. Grant was a strong anti-secessionist, and
he spent much breath in arguing with the people in private. On his
return to his room, one day, he found a glass dish on the table, filled
with japonicas, camellias, roses, and other early flowers, with the card
of a married lady,--with whom he had had a debate,--inscribed, 'From the
hottest of the Secessionists.' He seems modified in his views a little
about 'the sum of all villanies,' since his return."

"Yes," said Mrs. North, "and the people here explain it by saying, 'O,
he was feted, and flattered.'

"Yes," she continued, "some of our people will sacrifice their
confidence in man or angel, rather than believe anything good about
slavery."

I said to her, "Add the Bible to those witnesses, Mrs. North."

"Husband," said she, "please reach me that long, thin, brown-covered
book on the what-not." She then read an extract from the sixty-third
page; it was a book by one now deceased, called, "Experience as a
Minister":

"I had not been long a minister, before I found this worship of the
Bible as a fetish hindering me at every step. If I declared the
Constancy of Nature's Laws, and sought therein great argument for the
Constancy of God, all the miracles came and held their mythologic finger
up. Even Slavery was 'of God,' for the divine statutes in the Old
Testament admitted the principle that man might own a man, as well as a
garden or an ox, and provided for the measure. Moses and the Prophets
were on its side; and neither Paul of Tarsus, nor Jesus of Nazareth,
uttered a direct word against it."

* * * * *

"But here is the sun!" said I.

"We are all more cheerful," said Mrs. North, "than we were when he left
us; for we have been able to converse on a trying and perplexing
subject with good feelings."

"Now," said I, "here is the Southern lady's letter, which has given
occasion to all our conversation."

"It has also introduced us," said Mr. North, "to that goose, Gustavus,
and to his good aunt."

"What shall I say to the Southern lady," said I, "if I write to her
father?"

"Tell her," said Mrs. North, "that if she comes to the North she must
come directly to our house and make it her home. If you will allow me, I
will put a note into your envelope to that effect. I shall beg her to
bring Kate with her. Wouldn't I love to see Kate!"

"My dear," said Mr. North, "do you know what a time there would be if
the lady should bring Kate with her?"

"The good time coming! I think it would be," said his wife, "to see the
Southern lady and her Kate under our roof."

"Why," Paid he, "we should all have to go to court?"

"Well, that would be interesting," said she; "but for what?"

"Why," said he, "you know that this is free soil: Kate is a slave; she
can have her freedom for nothing if she comes here. Some of our
Massachusetts gentlemen are as chivalrous and attentive to Southern
colored people, as our good friend tells us Southern gentlemen are to a
white woman: a committee would wait on Kate, with an officer of the
peace, and invite her to visit the court-house with them, to be
presented with 'freedom'; and Kate's mistress must go with her, to show
that she is not restraining Kate of her liberty."

"Why," said Mrs. North, "if I could not be allowed, in visiting Sharon
Springs, to take Judith with me to give me my baths, because she is
free, I should call it barbarism. Who was that gentleman that broke his
collar-bone and seat to you, husband, to get him a nurse?"

Mr. North said it was a student in a medical school, from the South.

"Did you find him a nurse?" said she.

"Yes," he replied; "but he groaned and said, 'Mother wanted to send on
my mammy that nursed me, but your laws will not allow her to come. Now,'
said he, 'mammy will not tamper with your servants here, and entice them
away, as free colored men might do to our slaves if they landed at the
South from your vessels. O, mammy,' said he, 'if I had your 'arbs and
your nursing, what a pleasure it would be to be sick.'"

"Poor fellow!" said Mrs. North. "What did you say to him?"

"O," said he, "I told him that we lived under different institutions;
and that when we are among the Romans we must do as the Romans do."

"Well," said Mrs. North, "if all such prohibitions are not downright
impertinence, then I will give up."

"It's the law of the land, here," said her husband.

"Is there no 'Higher Law' in such a case?" said she. "'Higher Law,' I
believe, is sometimes the rule in Massachusetts."

"Some of our most estimable colored fellow-citizens would attend her,"
said I, "and tempt her by their own prosperity and happiness in freedom,
at the North, to cast in her lot with them and abandon her Southern
home, her mistress, and her little charge, Susan; and her own little
Cygnet's grave. They would send her, if she wished, free of charge, to
Canada, and leave her there. She could be perfectly free."

"Now, what is all this for?" said Mrs. North. "Do the people here really
believe that Kate is 'oppressed?' that her mistress is a tyrant? that
Kate is a victim to the 'sum of all villanies?' that she buffers an
'enormous wrong?' that her mistress does her a 'stupendous injustice?'
If they wish for objects of charity, and will go with me, I will engage
to supply them with 'the oppressed' in any quantity, with some of 'the
down-trodden' also."

"But, my dear Mrs. North," said I, "''tis distance lends enchantment to
the view.' Besides, to get a slave away from a Southerner is worth
unspeakably more to the cause of human happiness than to help scores of
Northern people."

"But to be serious," said Mr. North, "we are afraid that slave-holding
may get a foothold in Massachusetts; so we have to challenge every one
who comes here with a slave, to show proof that he or she is not holding
the servant to involuntary servitude among us."

"But," said Mrs. North, "are the people so conscientiously fearful lest
bondage should get established here in Massachusetts? Is that the true
reason for hurrying every colored servant, who travels here with his or
her invalid master or mistress, before a court to know if he or she
would not prefer to quit the family and the South? It seems to me we are
sadly wanting in good manners."

"Now, please do not smile at your good wife for her simplicity, Mr.
North," said I, "for I suppose that you are thinking, What have 'good
manners' to do with the 'cause of freedom'? She is right in her
impressions; a lady's sense of propriety against all the world."

"Do publish the Southern lady's letter by all means," said Mrs. North.

"How surprised she would be," said I, "to see it in print, or to know
that it had wandered here, and was taking part in the discussions about
slavery."

"The letter," said Mrs. North, "would, just now, seem like Noah's poor
little dove, wandering over wrecks and desolations."

"True," said I, "and to finish the illusion, it might come back to her
after many days, and lo! in its mouth an olive-leaf plucked off!"

"Give my love to her," said Mrs. North; "her letter has made me a better
and happier woman. Now I love my whole country. I do justice in my
feelings to hundreds of thousands whom I have hitherto regarded as
perverse. I now see God's wonder-working providence in connection with
the slave. It seems plain to me in what way the Union can be saved, and
that is, by the general prevalence at the North of such views about
slavery as the very best people at the South declare to be just and
right."

"You would be deemed simple for saying that, Mrs. North," said I. "But
you are right."

"Three things," she continued, after a moment's pause, "are more
strongly impressed on my mind; please see if I am right:--That the
relation of master and slave is not in itself sinful; That good people
at the South feel toward injustice and cruelty precisely like us; and,
That Southern Christians can correct all the evils in slavery, or
abolish it, if necessary, better without our aid than with it."

"Mrs. North," said I, "unless we accept those propositions, the North
and South never can live together in peace; and if we separate, the
Northern conscience will be in a worse condition than ever, and we shall
have long wars."

"It is a marvellous thing to me," said she, "as I now view it, that our
good Christian people here are not willing to confide in that which good
Southern Christian people say about slavery. We should trust their
judgments, their moral sentiments, their consciences, on any other
subject. How is it that when men and women, who are the excellent of the
earth, tell us the results of their observation, experience, and
reflections, with regard to slavery, we treat them as we do? When
ill-mannered people, who must be vituperative and saucy to every body
and in every thing, behave thus, it is not surprising; but I cannot
explain why truly good men should not either adopt the deliberate
sentiments of good people at the South, or at least consent to leave the
subject, if beyond their faith or discernment, to the responsibility of
Southern Christians. I condemn myself in saying this. But having myself
been converted, I have hope for everybody."

During this talk, Mr. North was affected somewhat as he said his wife
was when he first read the Southern lady's letter to her. He was a
little incoherent by reason of his emotions; but he made out to say
something about the sweetness and the strength of reconciled affections,
and of the happiness which there would be when it should be proclaimed
that the North and the South are once more friends.

"What is your whole name, Mrs. North?" said I; "for I shall wish to
speak of you to the Southern lady, if I write to her father."

"My Christian name," said she, "is Patience."

"PATIENCE NORTH!" I said to myself, once or twice, as I stood at the
parlor door. I was musing upon the name perhaps ten or fifteen seconds,
and when I looked up, they were each both smiling at me and crying.

We shook hands, and I went my way.


THE END.

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