"No, my dear Oliver, and I never intend to. If ever I go it will be with a musket. They have had it all their own way lately with their Harriet Stowes, William Lloyd Garrisons, and John Browns; it is our turn now."
"Who do you want to run through the body, Clayton?" asked Richard, joining the group and laying his hands affectionately on the Colonel's shoulders.
"Anybody and everybody, Richard, who says we are not free people to do as we please."
"And is anybody really saying so?"
"Yes; you see it every day in every Northern editorial—another to-day—a most villainous attack which you must read. These Puritans have been at it for years. This psalm-singing crew have always hated us. Now, while they are preaching meekness and lowliness and the rights of our fellow-men—black ones they mean—they are getting ready to wad their guns with their hymn-books. It's all a piece of their infernal hypocrisy!"
"But why should they hate us, Clayton?" asked Richard in a half-humorous tone. He had no spirit of contention in him to-night, not with Oliver beside him.
"Because we Cavaliers are made of different stuff; that's why! All this talk about slavery is nonsense. These Nutmeg fellows approved of slavery as long as they could make a dollar out of the traffic, and then, as soon as they found out that they had given us a commercial club with which to beat out their brains, and that we were really dominating the nation, they raised this hue and cry about the downtrodden negro and American freedom and the Stars and Stripes and a lot of such tomfoolery. Do you know any gentleman who beats his negroes? Do you beat Malachi? Do I beat my Sam, whom I have brought up from a boy and who would lay down his life any day for me? I tell you, Richard, it is nothing but a fight for financial and political mastery. They're afraid of us; they've been so for years. They cried 'Wolf' when the fugitive slave law was passed and they've kept it up ever since."
"No, I don't believe it," exclaimed Richard, with a positive tone in his voice "and neither do you, Clayton. It's largely a question of sentiment. They don't believe one man should hold another in bondage."
"That's where you are wrong. They don't care a fippenny bit about the negro. If they ever succeed in their infernal purpose and abolish slavery, and set the negro adrift, mark my words, they won't live with him, and they won't let him come North and work alongside of their own people. They'll throw him back on us after they have made a beggar and a criminal of him. Only a Southerner understands the negro, and only a Southerner can care for him. See what we have done for them! Every slave that landed on our shores we have changed from a savage into a man. They forget this."
Judge Bowman joined in the discussion—so did Dr. Wallace. The Judge, in his usual ponderous way, laid down the law, both State and National—the Doctor, who always took the opposite side in any argument, asking him rather pointed questions as to the rights of the Government to control the several States as a unit.