"And Abe Lincoln took up for the cruelties?"
"Not exactly that, but he said the Indians didn't do any worse than we would. They try to kill us and go at it the best way they know how. We try to kill them and, having bullets instead of arrows, kill more of them. Besides, he says this country belonged to them before it did to us, and we got it just as a big dog gets a bone away from a little dog. And he said more. He said that we, professing to be civilized and Christians, break our promises and treaties worse than they do."
Rutledge took his pipe from his mouth and slowly exhaled a thin cloud of smoke. Then he said: "Well, John, the only thing the matter with this is that it's all true."
"Maybe so," McNeil admitted. "But what's it going to get him, taking up for slaves and Indians."
"And poor little children whose fathers beat them, and women dying alone in the forest?"
It was Ann who asked this question. She had been sitting by her little sewing-table, mending stockings.
"That's what I'm asking," John McNeil repeated. "How's a man going to make money, fighting customers who swear in his store, or leaving his shop to hunt folks who have paid him a penny too much; or to get votes, taking up for folks that haven't any?"
The young man spoke quite seriously. John Rutledge laughed and then said: "It's the principle of things that counts. At present, however, only local issues are being discussed. On these Abe Lincoln is what we want."
"You'll lose your vote if you cast it for him. He'll never get anywhere politically. Mark what I tell you."