CHAPTER XII.
FETTERED HANDS UPLIFTED.
The great law of our time, that of the unity of all existence, asserted itself with peculiar and perpetual force in the busy home at Mattenheim. A man of mature years had deliberately concentrated his thoughts upon the movement in the New World; and the destiny of a youth was bound up in the same.
Papers and despatches from America came thicker and faster.
They lived a twofold life, immersed in pressing and manifold business here, but intent, meanwhile, upon the sharp crisis so rapidly approaching in a remote quarter of the world.
Roland devoured the letters and journals in which the so-called slavery-question was discussed. Doctor Fritz wrote doubtfully of Lincoln. The man's nature was so simple, and his faith in men's goodness so thorough, that he feared he would not be decided enough with the chivalry of the South.
For the first time, Roland heard the slaveholders called chivalry; and Weidmann declared that it was no mere form of speech, but a perfectly explicit term. The slave-owners wanted to live merely for the nobler passions, as they were called: other men must toil for their subsistence, and even for their luxuries. This is the true feudal spirit, which looks upon labor as something humiliating and disgraceful, whereas, in reality, man's only true nobleness consists in labor.
Two books exercised a powerful influence upon Roland's mind. He read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for the first time, and wept over it, but presently roused himself, and asked,—
"How is this? Shall we point the scourged and oppressed to a reward in the next world, where the master will be punished and the slave elevated? But who can compensate him for the torment he has endured here? Is it not as it was with Claus? Who could indemnify him for the captivity he had to undergo before he was pronounced innocent?"
Very different was the effect produced upon the young man's mind by a book of Friedrich Kapp's, entitled "Slavery in America," which had grown up out of a dense mass of previously accumulated material, and, by a remarkable coincidence, appeared at precisely this time.
At first, Roland could not comprehend how it was possible for a man to give so clear and lifelike a picture of facts so revolting. When he came to the ensuing passage, he wept aloud.
"The owners of the slave-ships are almost always foreigners,—Spaniards, Portuguese, and, alas!" here followed a dash that was like a dagger to the reader,—"alas! even Germans."
Everywhere, by day and by night, Roland talked of what was agitating his soul; and, for the first time, he felt something like distrust of Benjamin Franklin. He learned, indeed, that Franklin was president of the Abolition Society in Philadelphia, but, also, that he, like the other great heroes of the American War for Independence, in his earnest desire for unanimity at the time the Union was founded, had trusted to the expectation that slavery would be extinguished within a lifetime by the mere increase of free labor.
This hope had proved deceptive, and Roland recalled with anguish that remark of Theodore Parker's,—
"All the great charters of humanity have been written in blood."
Often did Roland stand thoughtfully before a picture of Ary Scheffer's, which hung in the large sitting-room. It represented the adoration of Jesus; and there was a negro in it, stretching out his fettered arms toward the redeeming and consoling Saviour, with a most affecting expression. For two thousand years, this race had been extending its fettered hands toward the redemptive thought of mankind. Why had this lasted so long?
To Weidmann, Roland confessed what was weighing on his heart; and Weidmann succeeded in changing his sorrow into joy, that the time had now come in which these things would have an end. He was peculiarly severe upon those, who, like sentimental criminals, represent, sin and crime as evil, and yet say, "There is no help for it. So it has been, and so it must be."
Goethe's verses now occurred to Roland, and he repeated them to Weidmann, who said,—
"It is the free man's inherited privilege to see absolute perfection in no man. Like Goethe, the Americans boast in having no mediæval conditions to overcome; but they have inherited slavery, which many even declare to be the natural condition of the laboring classes."
Weidmann gave Roland, Abraham Lincoln's speech at the Cooper Institute in New York.
Roland was requested to read it aloud; but his voice choked, and his utterance was painfully agitated, when he came to the words,—
"Were we even to withhold our votes, Republicans, you may be sure the Democrats would not be satisfied. We could not stop there. We must leave off calling slavery a wrong, and justify it loudly and unconditionally; we must pull down our Free State Constitutions; the whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.
"And since the Southerners pretend that slavery is a righteous institution, honorable to mankind, the logical inference is, that it ought universally to be recognized as a moral good and a social blessing, and everywhere introduced.
"Our sense of duty forbids such a thought. And, if so, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored,—contrivances such as seeking for some middle ground between the right and wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man,—such as a policy of 'don't care' on a question about which all true men do care,—such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling not sinners but the righteous to repentance.
"Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us; nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and, in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."
Tears rose to Roland's eyes. He glanced up at the picture where the slave was stretching out his fettered hands; and within him rose the words, "Thou art free."