"Stop a minute," he answered; "that is not exactly a fair statement of the question. Each State has its reserved rights. It gives up to the federal government the decision of certain questions affecting the interests of the whole Union. Its domestic laws and institutions it reserves entirely for its own decision. The North--I am a Northern man you must remember--seeks to violate this compact, upon which the whole Union depends, and wages war--for it is a moral warfare--against the South, upon the institution of slavery. That institution is, in fact, the battleground. The South occupies it, and says,--'It is mine. You shall not drive me from it. It is true, I care very little for this debatable ground, and may hereafter, in my own good time, give it up as a thing not worth contending about; but I will not give it up to force; and on this ground I will fight you; for if you carry this aggression by my imbecility or indolence, no one can tell where you will attack me next. In regard to your abstract doctrines, you may be right or you may be wrong; but with regard to your interference with my domestic affairs, you are decidedly wrong; and that I will not tolerate.' In short, my good friend, whatever the North has done, and whatever the North may do, in this sense, only tends to rivet the chains on the hands of the negro more firmly than before. It may seem very absurd, but such is human nature; and although I admit that in many of the arguments used by the abolitionists, and even by this man, McGrubber, to-night, there is a great deal of force, yet their strength is changed to weakness when men become convinced, as every Southern man is, that they are used for political, factious, and partisan purposes. You cannot have a domestic police in such a union as this; and every man will whip his own children in his own house, when he thinks they deserve it."
"Although I judged it rash and most dangerous," I answered, "to preach such doctrines as we have heard to-night to a large crowd of negroes, yet I could not help thinking that many of Mr. Mc Grubber's arguments were exceedingly specious, if not cogent: that little apologue of his, for instance, of the white slave in Barbary and his liberation. It struck me as a very happy illustration of his views."'
"A cunning piece of rhetoric," answered my acute friend, "peculiarly illustrative of the rhetoric of fanatics. Do you not remark that whenever they have a point to carry, they employ a figure, and in that figure they pre-suppose a complete parity between two really dissimilar cases. Knock away the petition principia, and what do you find? Here he places a white man, always accustomed to freedom, and with all the intellectual qualities impliedly cultivated by a white man's education, with a white man's wants, wishes, habits, and feelings, exactly upon a par with a negro born upon a plantation, habituated from infancy to slavery, without a thought, a desire, or a notion beyond the state in which he was brought up, except such as may have been instilled into him by abolitionists. Is this fair to begin with? Is there a parity between the two cases? Then again, the white man in flying from the bonds which had been accidentally imposed upon him, returns to home, to his ancient habits, to the free use of faculties and endowments which are sure, if rightly employed, to lead to competence, if not to wealth, to independence, and to ease. The negro flying from his master, on the contrary, leaves family and friends, old habits and associations, food, care, and protection in sickness or old age, for a wide, unfriended, uncertain, future, where there is nothing probable but long-protracted labour, unbefriended sickness, unpitied decrepitude, and death on a dunghill. His nominal independence is shackled by the continual necessity of seeking food by labour; and his freedom becomes a curse instead of a blessing, in consequence of the prejudices of colour and caste. Is there any parity between these two cases? I declare I would a great deal rather be a slave to the hardest master I have ever seen in Virginia--and I have now been here many years--than I would be a free negro in an abolition state. But this was all rhetoric, mere rhetoric, the most cowardly and contemptible of all species of sophistry. Much better to say boldly, 'You have no right to reduce any man to slavery--you shall not do evil that good may come of it--the Declaration of Independence says, that all men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. By holding any man in slavery, whatever be his colour, you violate this first great principle of the American constitution, you break the solemn pact upon which this union was founded, by which alone she claimed, maintained, and accomplished her independence of Great Britain.' Better to say this, and fight it out upon this ground, than go sneakingly to work to get petty advantages in Congress, or criminally strive to render the slaves discontented with their masters. I have come to the conclusion, my dear Sir Richard, that the abolitionists are the very worst enemies of the slaves themselves, who, after all, are but mere----" Here his ovation, which was much more grave and earnest than anything I had ever heard fall from his lips before, was brought to a close by a loud outcry, proceeding from a spot immediately in front of us. Cries for help, loud exclamations, and blows, seemed to be going on.
"Don't you do dat, Jack. Oh, you mean to murder me. Help! help! murder! I tell you notin' but de truth. Jim, I did not tink dat of you. Help! help! murder! What you knock my head so for?" I thought I recognized the voice of my good friend, Zed; and ran forward as fast as possible; but before, in the turnings of the wood, I could reach the scene, I heard another voice, which also seemed familiar, exclaiming in a loud, imperative tone--
"Let him alone! Fools, would you make an outbreak before the time? If you strike him again, I will dash your brains out. The man only says what he thinks true." As the last words were uttered, I came out upon that little track of open ground which I have before spoken of as close to the Hunter Wood. A small edge of the moon was peeping up above the trees; and some half dozen yards before me was a negro on the ground--no other than my friend Zed--with a second just raising a thick stick over his head. Close by was a tall, powerful man, whom I afterwards found to be Nat Turner, in the act of throwing furiously back, from the scene of conflict, a fourth gentleman of the same hue, who had apparently been bent upon the demolition of poor Zed. I sprang forward at once upon the man who was belabouring my good servant, took the descending blow upon my left arm--which I do believe it very nearly broke--and knocked him down at once. Zed sprang upon his feet and seized the fellow by the throat as he lay, while Mr. Wheatley stood by, laughing and exclaiming--
"Bravo, Sir Richard! a very pretty exhibition of the manly art, as you call it in England. You will know the hardness of a negro's head for the future; for you will find your knuckles all out, if I am not greatly mistaken."
"Let the man get up, Zed," I said, not very well pleased will my companion's untimely merriment, for I was smarting from the blow on the arm; and, to say the truth, my knuckles were cut as if I had struck a stone wall; "let the man get up, and if he wants to be knocked down again, he shall have it." No sooner was his throat free, however, than Zed's assailant sprang upon his feet, and took to his heels as fast as he could go. The other two followed at the same speedy pace, although Zed cried aloud,--
"You need not run, Mr. Turner; you are a good man, and come to help me first." However, none of them stayed; for it is rather a dangerous thing in these states for a negro to be any way mixed up with an affray in which a white man is struck. As we walked homeward towards Beavors, the cause of the conflict was explained to me and my white companion. It seems that Zed, just at the close of Mr. McGrubber's harangue, had taken his way back towards the house, accompanied by two men whom he called Jack and Jim. As they went, they commented, amusingly enough, I doubt not, upon all they had heard, passing Nat Turner, who followed them a step or two behind, but who seemed, Zed said, in a gloomy mood, and would neither speak to them nor join their party. Zed, it would appear, took up ground in direct opposition to his two swarthy companions. He had had some experience, when his leg was broken, of the condition of a sick and free negro, and he declared that freedom was the most miserable state in the world, and that Mr. McGrubber and all the Abolitionists were great fools or great rascals for wishing to force it upon the slaves. The dispute got hot and angry; they mutually began to call each other bad names; the slaves in general feel no good-will and a certain degree of contempt towards free negroes. From words they came to blows, and Zed was in the high-road to have his brains knocked out, when Nat Turner came up to occupy one of his assailants, while I delivered him from the other. There was no great significance in Master Zed's story, excepting so far as it showed that amongst some of the slaves, at least, there was a fierce and eager desire for freedom; but a few words had been spoken by Nat Turner just as I was approaching, which made me ponder and doubt. He had said--
"Fools! would you make an outbreak before the time?" I could come but to one conclusion, namely, that an outbreak of some kind was contemplated, and that a time was fixed for it. I knew not how soon it was to take place. I determined, however, to watch what was going on around, and, without putting my poor acquaintance, Nat Turner, in peril, to give Mr. Thornton a hint that I had reason to believe the existing calm was treacherous, and likely to be followed by a storm. In the meantime, Mr. Wheatley walked on by my side, laughing and talking in his light but pungent way; commenting, notwithstanding Zed's presence, upon the peculiarities of the negro race, and declaring that they were nothing but great babies, always ready to scratch, and fight, and whine upon the very slightest occasion. We found the whole party, with the exception of Mr. McGrubber, assembled in the drawing-room at Beavors. Bessy's lustrous eyes turned upon me eagerly, as she inquired,--
"Well, what do you think of it, Cousin Richard?"