"You have been reading and thinking, haven't you, Reverdy?"
"Oh, yes, all the time. What I am afraid of is a war. I had a little dab of it in the Black Hawk trouble. But a war between these states would shake the earth. I have two boys, you know. Sarah worries about it. Everybody's beginning to live in a kind of terror."
"I have read about it too, ever since I have been in America. I have applied my philosophically exercised faculties to it. I have talked with Mr. Williams about it many times and with Douglas. I have had dozens of conversations on all these things. It seems to me that I could advance some new arguments myself."
"What new arguments could you advance?" asked Reverdy.
"Well," I said, "suppose I wanted to take a definite stand that slavery is wrong, which these Whigs won't. They only play with the question. They want to limit it perhaps. But why? Is it wrong? Or is it against northern interests? What? But suppose I took such a stand and needed a legal foundation. Couldn't I say that Congress could prohibit slavery in the territories under the power it has to regulate commerce between them? I put this question to Mr. Williams and he hadn't thought of it; but he told me that Judge Marshall held that commerce was traffic. Very well? Isn't slavery traffic? It's buying and selling. It impresses things that are bought and sold—cotton. And slaves are the subject of traffic. Therefore to regulate it—keep the slaves out of the territories where they might be bought and sold after getting into the territories, as well as where they might be sold into the territories—is the regulation of commerce, isn't it? Well now, isn't that better than calling the territories property and subject to the arbitrary rule of Congress as merely inert matter? If you can rule the territories arbitrarily as to slavery, why not as to anything else? Suppose we annex Cuba; under this doctrine we could rule Cuba arbitrarily, just as England ruled the Colonies here arbitrarily. Then take the assumption that Congress has the power to keep slavery out of the territories; just the power, not the express duty; well, it follows that Congress has the power to let it in the territories. If it can put it in or out of the territories it can leave the territories to put it in or out. And why isn't that best? Right here is the point of my adherence to Douglas. For I see a growing central power in this country not acting on its lawful authority, but upon its own will, dictated by theories of morality or trade or monopoly. If this matter is left to the territories it is left to the source of sovereign power and to local interests; if it is controlled by Congress it means an increasing centralization. What I really mean is that this mere assumption that Congress can deal with the matter in virtue of some vague sovereignty, without pointing out some express power in Congress to do so, leads straight to imperialism. And thus on the whole, having a regard for the future of America and its liberty, I stand with Douglas. I have read Webster in his theories that the territories are property, and can therefore be dealt with under the clause which empowers Congress to make all needful laws and regulations for the territory and other property of the United States. Well, why doesn't he go farther and let Congress at one stroke emancipate the slaves? For a slave is certainly property, and if needful rules and regulations as to the negro require his emancipation, why can't he be emancipated under this clause? But if territory is property, so is a slave. And if territory is property, who owns the property? Why, all the states of course. And if they own the land and own the slaves too, why can't they take into their own land, unless they are forbidden to do so by a majority of the states, representatives legislating under some clause of the Constitution which gives them the right to do so?"
"Oh, yes," said Reverdy, "I have heard most of this before. But I'll tell you: the first man of account who rises up to say that slavery is wrong will be remembered, even if he is not honored. I am not talking about all these agitators and fellows; nor even of Seward or of Hale—they're too sharp and smart. I mean some man who puts the right feeling into the thing like Mrs. Stowe did in her book. You see, I was raised in Tennessee, and I don't care how you apologize for it, or make it look like labor of other kinds, or prove that all labor is slavery, just the same this negro slavery is vile. You can find good reasons for anything you want to do. I don't know where we get our right and wrong—it comes up from something deep in us. But when we get it, all this argument that Douglas is so skillful in simply melts away. I really wonder that so many women in the South favor slavery and that my mother was so wedded to it, and Dorothy now."
We were passing now the house I had built. "Who lives there now?" I asked. Reverdy gave me the name. It was not the man to whom I had sold the farm. I thought of Fortescue. "Where is Fortescue?" "Oh, he lit out from here," said Reverdy. "Do you know," I said, "I have thought it possible that Zoe might not be dead." "How could that be?" "I don't know. I feel that I went through that transaction dazed and without verifying things, as I should have done." "Oh, no, if Zoe were living you would know of it long before now."
After our drive we came back to Sarah and the meal that she had prepared for us. Women reflect the politics of the hour in nerves and anxiety, in anticipated sorrows. Sarah wished all agitations to stop. She longed for peace. She was in dread of war. Perhaps Dorothy's health had been affected by the growing turbulence of the country.
Young Amos and Jonas came in and ate with us. We turned to the talk of railroads and the growth of Chicago. Sarah took a hand now and said: "These things are all right. You won't get any war out of railroads and telegraphs. You men can reason and argue as much as you please about this slavery matter; but I have two sons, and I didn't bring them into the world to be killed in a war; and I won't have it if I can help it—not for all the niggers in the world."