“Obedience to any and every command,—is that what you mean, madame?”
“Unquestionably, it is.”
“And must I not exercise my reason as to what is right or wrong?”
“Your reason, under slavery, is subordinated to another’s. You must not set up your own reason against your master’s.”
“Supposing my master should order me to stab or poison you,—ought I to do it?”
The judge’s daughter, like all who venture to vindicate the leprous wrong on moral grounds, found herself nonplussed.
“You suppose a ridiculous and improbable case,” she replied.
“Well, madame, let me state a fact. One of your pupils had a letter yesterday from a sister in Alabama, who wrote that a slave woman had killed herself under these circumstances: her master had compelled her to unite herself in so-called marriage with a black man, though she fully believed a former husband still lived. To escape the abhorred consequence, she put an end to her life. Was that woman right or wrong in opposing her master’s will?”
“How can you ask?” returned Mrs. Gentry, reproachfully. “’T is the slave’s duty to marry as the master orders.”
“Even though her husband be living, do I understand you?”