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?