"I have been reading our constitution and looking over the record of 'the late unpleasantness,'" said Jean. "It is very interesting to me. Do you know, father, I love every woman who gave a husband or a son to her country, and I almost hold in reverence the memory of the men who shed their blood to effect the abolition of human slavery in America."
The tall form of the Judge straightened and his eye brightened, like a soldier's when he hears the names of his old battle-fields.
"Do not forget," he said, "that there were those who acted as brave a part who never faced a cannon. It is easy to be borne by the force of a great wave; but those who by their time and talents put the wave of public opinion in motion are the real heroes.
"I can remember the time when a man who preached or taught Abolition was looked upon as narrow-minded, fanatical, bigoted and even criminal. When the name was a stench in the nostrils of the people even in liberty-loving Boston. When men were rotten-egged, beaten, and in some instances killed because they dared to follow the dictates of their own consciences and make sentiment for the overthrow of the traffic in humanity. It took all this to bring it about. No great moral reform takes place without agitation, or without martyrs. Those men bore the brunt of battle before the battle was. They were most surely heroes. They made the tidal wave of opinion that swept the country with insistent force and struck the shackles from 3,000,000 slaves."
"And you, father, were one of them," cried the enthusiastic girl. "What perils you must have braved!"
"I did all I could, you may be sure," answered the judge, modestly, "and I imagine it would be more agreeable to be whipped in a hand-to-hand encounter than to be caricatured, misrepresented and lied about, and by those, too, who claimed to have the abolition of slavery near their hearts, who prayed unceasingly for its utter destruction, and then split hairs as to the way in which it was to be accomplished, and who fondly hoped to exterminate it by marking boundary lines."
"But then," asked Jean, "was there no way by which this terrible war could have been averted? No way by which the government could have regulated and gradually suppressed slavery?"
"Regulations and restrictions," replied the Judge, waxing eloquent, "put upon such a vice by a government are but its terms of partnership. Gradual suppression of a mighty evil is always a signal failure, and while we wait to prove these failures the enemy gains foothold."
"I am proud of you, father—proud to be my father's boy—proud to be the daughter of a patriot," said Jean, with tears in her clear eyes. "I am a patriot, too, and if ever such an issue comes to the front in my day, I intend to do a patriot's part, if I am a woman."