“So long as the negro is ruled by force,” returned Mr. Sterling, “no forty-parson power of preaching can elevate his character. It is a savage mockery to prate of duty to one in whom we have emasculated all power of will. We cannot make a moral intelligence of a being we use as a mere muscular force.”
“All that the South wants,” exclaimed the Doctor, “is to be let alone in the matter of slavery. If there are any alleviations in the system which can be safely applied, be sure they will not be lacking as soon as we are let alone by the fanatics of the North. Leave the solution of the problem to the intelligence and humanity of the South.”
“Not while new cotton-lands pay so well! Be sure, reverend sir, if the South cannot quickly find a solution of this slave problem, God will find one for them, and that, trust me, will be a violent one. American civilization and American slavery can no longer exist together. One or the other must be destroyed. For my part, I can’t believe it to be the Divine purpose that a remnant of barbarism shall overthrow the civilization of a new world. Slavery must succumb.”[[4]]
“I recommend you, Mr. Sterling, not to raise your voice quite so high when you touch upon these dangerous topics here at the South. I will bid you good evening, sir.”
CHAPTER VI.
PIN-HOLES IN THE CURTAIN.
“The reader will here be led into the great, ill-famed land of the marvellous.”
Ennemoser.
The conversation between the English traveller and the Virginia Doctor of Divinity was brought to a close, and Peek jumped down from the table on which he had been listening, refreshed and inspired by the eloquent words he had taken in.
A week afterwards he made a second attempt to escape from bondage. He was caught and sold to Mr. Carberry Ratcliff, who had an estate on the Red River. Here, failing in obedience to an atrocious order, he received a punishment, the scars of which always remained to show the degree of its barbarity. He was soon after sent to Texas, where he became the slave of Mr. Barnwell.
Here he was at first put to the roughest work in the cotton-field. It tasked all his ingenuity to slight or dodge it. Luckily for him, about the time of his arrival he found an opportunity to make profitable use of the ecclesiastical knowledge he had derived from the Rev. Messrs. Bloom and Palmer.