Rhoda of the Underground

by Florence Finch Kelly

“She’s right, Kimball!” said Dr. Ware, his glance resting for a moment upon his daughter’s face. She looked up in some confusion at having broken in so abruptly, and met his eyes. Cool and clear, they seemed to be looking into her very heart and down in their gray depths as they turned away she felt rather than saw a gleam of gratification. The hot blood flushed her face, and conscience, that had just now barely stirred under its rose-leaf coverlet, roused and began to tell her that she too must keep on fighting. Had her father guessed how near she had been to deserting their cause, she wondered.

“Yet, she’s right,” Dr. Ware was repeating, with a thump of his fist on the table. “We’ve got to find standing ground somewhere, and somehow keep up the fight!”

“Their next step will be to reopen the slave trade—they’re demanding that already,” Kimball went on. “And then we shall have once more all the horrors of the slave ships sheltered under the law and people taught to regard the traffic as right because it is legal.”

“Yes,” broke in Hardaker, “that’s the worst of these legalized wrongs—the way they debauch the consciences of people. Look at the way the northern Democrats are defending the right of property in slaves! A few years ago they admitted slavery was wrong, but said it was here and so we must make the best of it. Now they say it is all right and must be protected and are tumbling over one another in their eagerness to give the South everything she wants!”

“Well, this decision gives her everything she wants now, and opens the door for her to take anything else she may want later.”

Kimball’s thin old hands were clenched together and his gray-bearded face was sad with the hopelessness of age. For thirty years he had been fighting with all his strength in the cause of the slave and he had seen the anti-slavery sentiment grow from the conviction of a mere handful of people to the determination of a mighty multitude. And now, when at last it seemed as if they had almost reached the point where at least the thing could be penned up in small space and its political power taken from it, now had come this deadly blow, to nullify every effort they could make.

Rhoda knew what long years of endeavor and sacrifice he had spent in the anti-slavery cause and how ardent had been his hope that he might live to see slavery ended and the whole country made free. She watched him now, her cheeks flushing and her heart responding with full sympathy to the grief and despair that filled his breast.

“If Congress,” he went on bitterly, “must recognize and defend the master’s right to his slave wherever he takes him, then there can be no hindrance to slavery in any part of this country, and Toombs and Davis and all the rest of them can yet call the roll of their slaves in the shadow of Bunker Hill monument, or any place else they wish. That, my friends, is what this decision means!”

His voice trembled and Rhoda saw in his eyes the tears of an old man whose dearest hope had come to naught. She was conscious of a remorseful shame, as though she herself had been in some measure responsible for his grief and despair. For had she not, was her swift, self-accusing thought, been ready to compromise with this monster?

“No, no, Mr. Kimball, you mustn’t give up like that,” Hardaker was exclaiming, “not while there’s one of us left to die fighting. And the election last fall showed that there are more than a million of us, who at least are ready to help. Rhoda’s got the right idea,” and he looked at her with smiling approval.