There was now a discussion as to Vance. Who knew him? No one intimately. Several had a mere bowing acquaintance with him. Ratcliff could not remember that he had ever seen him. Had Vance contributed to the cause? Yes. He had paid a thousand dollars for the relief of the suffering at the hospital. Did anybody know what he was worth? A cotton-broker present knew of his making “thirty thousand dollars clean” in one operation in the winter of 1858. Did he own any real estate in the city? His name was not down in the published list of holders. If he owned any, it was probably held under some other person’s name. Among tax-payers he was rated at only fifty thousand dollars; but he might have an income from property in other places, perhaps at the North, on which he ought to pay his quota in this hour of common danger. It was decided to send to see why Vance did not come; and a third officer was despatched to find him.
“Does any one know,” asked Semmes, “whether Captain Onslow has yet got the news of this terrible disaster to his family in Texas?”
“The intelligence has but just reached us at head-quarters,” replied Mr. Ferrand, a wealthy Creole. “I hope it will not shake the Captain’s loyalty to the good cause.”
“Why should it?” inquired Ratcliff.
“He must be a spooney to let it make any difference,” said Sanderson.
“Some people are so weak and prejudiced!” replied Robson. “Tell them the good of the institution requires that their whole family should be disembowelled, and they can’t see it. Tell them that though their sister was outraged, yet ’ was in the holy cause of slavery, and it doesn’t satisfy ’em. Such sordid souls, incapable of grand sacrifices, are too common.”
“That’s a fact,” responded George Sanderson, who was getting thirsty, and adhered to Robson as to the genius of good liquor.
“Old Onslow deserved his fate,” said Mr. Curry, a fiery little man, resembling Vice-President Stephens.
“To be sure he deserved it!” returned Robson. “And so did that heretical young girl, his daughter, deserve hers. Why, it’s asserted, on good authority, that she had been heard to repeat Patrick Henry’s remark, that slavery is inconsistent with the Christian religion!”
Mr. Polk, who, being related to a bishop, thought it was incumbent on him to rebuke extreme sentiments, here mildly remarked: “We do not make war on young girls and women. I’m sorry our friends in Texas should resort to such violent practices.”