19.4-CHAPTER XIX Miss Ophelia's Experiences and Opinions Continued part4-mt

CHAPTER XIX

Miss Ophelia's Experiences and Opinions Continued part4

"But twoyears' trial satisfied me that I could not be a partner in that matter. To havea great gang of seven hundred, whom I could not know personally, or feel anyindividual interest in, bought and driven, housed, fed, worked like so manyhorned cattle, strained up to military precision,—the question of how little of life'scommonest enjoyments would keep them in working order being a constantlyrecurring problem,—the necessity of drivers andoverseers,—the ever-necessary whip, first, last, andonly argument,—the whole thing was insufferablydisgusting and loathsome to me; and when I thought of my mother's estimate ofone poor human soul, it became even frightful!

"It's allnonsense to talk to me about slaves enjoying all this! To thisday, I have no patience with the unutterable trash that some of yourpatronizing Northerners have made up, as in their zeal to apologize for oursins. We all know better. Tell me that any man living wants to work all hisdays, from day-dawn till dark, under the constant eye of a master, without thepower of putting forth one irresponsible volition, on the same dreary,monotonous, unchanging toil, and all for two pairs of pantaloons and a pair ofshoes a year, with enough food and shelter to keep him in working order! Anyman who thinks that human beings can, as a general thing, be made about ascomfortable that way as any other, I wish he might try it. I'd buy the dog, andwork him, with a clear conscience!"

"I always havesupposed," said Miss Ophelia, "that you, all of you, approved ofthese things, and thought them right —according toScripture."

"Humbug! Weare not quite reduced to that yet. Alfred who is as determined a despot as everwalked, does not pretend to this kind of defence;—no, he stands, high and haughty, onthat good old respectable ground, the right of the strongest ;and he says, and I think quite sensibly, that the American planter is 'onlydoing, in another form, what the English aristocracy and capitalists are doingby the lower classes;' that is, I take it, appropriating them,body and bone, soul and spirit, to their use and convenience. He defends both,—and I think, at least, consistently . He says thatthere can be no high civilization without enslavement of the masses, eithernominal or real. There must, he says, be a lower class, given up to physicaltoil and confined to an animal nature; and a higher one thereby acquiresleisure and wealth for a more expanded intelligence and improvement, andbecomes the directing soul of the lower. So he reasons, because, as I said, heis born an aristocrat;—so I don't believe, because Iwas born a democrat."

"How in theworld can the two things be compared?" said Miss Ophelia. "TheEnglish laborer is not sold, traded, parted from his family, whipped."

"He is as muchat the will of his employer as if he were sold to him. The slave-owner can whiphis refractory slave to death,—the capitalist can starve him to death. As to family security, it ishard to say which is the worst,—to have one's childrensold, or see them starve to death at home."

"But it's nokind of apology for slavery, to prove that it isn't worse than some other badthing."

"I didn't giveit for one,—nay,I'll say, besides, that ours is the more bold and palpable infringement ofhuman rights; actually buying a man up, like a horse,—lookingat his teeth, cracking his joints, and trying his paces and then paying downfor him,—having speculators, breeders, traders, andbrokers in human bodies and souls,—sets the thingbefore the eyes of the civilized world in a more tangible form, though thething done be, after all, in its nature, the same; that is, appropriating oneset of human beings to the use and improvement of another without any regard totheir own."

"I neverthought of the matter in this light," said Miss Ophelia.

"Well, I'vetravelled in England some, and I've looked over a good many documents as to thestate of their lower classes; and I really think there is no denying Alfred,when he says that his slaves are better off than a large class of thepopulation of England. You see, you must not infer, from what I have told you,that Alfred is what is called a hard master; for he isn't. He is despotic, andunmerciful to insubordination; he would shoot a fellow down with as littleremorse as he would shoot a buck, if he opposed him. But, in general, he takesa sort of pride in having his slaves comfortably fed and accommodated.

"When I waswith him, I insisted that he should do something for their instruction; and, toplease me, he did get a chaplain, and used to have them catechized Sunday,though, I believe, in his heart, that he thought it would do about as much goodto set a chaplain over his dogs and horses. And the fact is, that a mindstupefied and animalized by every bad influence from the hour of birth,spending the whole of every week-day in unreflecting toil, cannot be done muchwith by a few hours on Sunday. The teachers of Sunday-schools among themanufacturing population of England, and among plantation-hands in our country,could perhaps testify to the same result, there and here . Yetsome striking exceptions there are among us, from the fact that the negro isnaturally more impressible to religious sentiment than the white."

"Well,"said Miss Ophelia, "how came you to give up your plantation life?"

"Well, wejogged on together some time, till Alfred saw plainly that I was no planter. Hethought it absurd, after he had reformed, and altered, and improved everywhere,to suit my notions, that I still remained unsatisfied. The fact was, it was,after all, the THING that I hated—the using these men and women, the perpetuation of allthis ignorance, brutality and vice,—just to make moneyfor me!

"Besides, Iwas always interfering in the details. Being myself one of the laziest ofmortals, I had altogether too much fellow-feeling for the lazy; and when poor,shiftless dogs put stones at the bottom of their cotton-baskets to make themweigh heavier, or filled their sacks with dirt, with cotton at the top, itseemed so exactly like what I should do if I were they, I couldn't and wouldn'thave them flogged for it. Well, of course, there was an end of plantationdiscipline; and Alf and I came to about the same point that I and my respectedfather did, years before. So he told me that I was a womanish sentimentalist,and would never do for business life; and advised me to take the bank-stock andthe New Orleans family mansion, and go to writing poetry, and let him managethe plantation. So we parted, and I came here."

"But why didn'tyou free your slaves?"

"Well, Iwasn't up to that. To hold them as tools for money-making, I could not;—have them to helpspend money, you know, didn't look quite so ugly to me. Some of them were oldhouse-servants, to whom I was much attached; and the younger ones were childrento the old. All were well satisfied to be as they were." He paused, andwalked reflectively up and down the room.

"Therewas," said St. Clare, "a time in my life when I had plans and hopesof doing something in this world, more than to float and drift. I had vague,indistinct yearnings to be a sort of emancipator,—to free my native land from this spotand stain. All young men have had such fever-fits, I suppose, some time,—but then—"

"Why didn'tyou?" said Miss Ophelia;—"you ought not to put your hand to the plough, and lookback."

"O, well,things didn't go with me as I expected, and I got the despair of living thatSolomon did. I suppose it was a necessary incident to wisdom in us both; but,some how or other, instead of being actor and regenerator in society, I becamea piece of driftwood, and have been floating and eddying about, ever since.Alfred scolds me, every time we meet; and he has the better of me, I grant,—for he really doessomething; his life is a logical result of his opinions and mine is acontemptible non sequitur ."

"My dearcousin, can you be satisfied with such a way of spending your probation?"