"Lord help you, Clayton! What will you do? Will you settle down on your plantation, and raise cotton and sell niggers? I'm expecting to hear, every minute, that you've subscribed for the 'Liberator,' and are going to turn Abolitionist."
"I do mean to settle down on my plantation, but not to raise cotton or negroes as a chief end of man. I do take the 'Liberator,' because I'm a free man, and have a right to take what I have a mind to. I don't agree with Garrison, because I think I know more about the matter, where I stand, than he does, or can, where he stands. But it's his right, as an honest man, to say what he thinks; and I should use it in his place. If I saw things as he does, I should be an Abolitionist. But I don't."
"That's a mercy, at least," said Russel, "to a man with your taste for martyrdom. But what are you going to do?"
"What any Christian man should do who finds four hundred odd of his fellow men and women placed in a state of absolute dependence on him. I'm going to educate and fit them for freedom. There isn't a sublimer power on earth than God has given to us, masters. The law gives us absolute and unlimited control. A plantation such as a plantation might be would be 'a light to lighten the Gentiles.' There is a wonderful and beautiful development locked up in this Ethiopian race, and it is worth being a life-object to unlock it. The raising of cotton is to be the least of the thing. I regard my plantation as a sphere for raising men and women, and demonstrating the capabilities of a race."
"Selah!" said Russel.
Clayton looked angry.
"I beg your pardon, Clayton. This is all superb, sublime! There is just one objection to it—it is wholly impossible."
"Every good and great thing has been called impossible before it is done."
"Well, let me tell you, Clayton, just how it will be. You will be a mark for arrows, both sides. You will offend all your neighbors by doing better than they do. You will bring your negroes up to a point in which they will meet the current of the whole community against them, and meanwhile you will get no credit with the Abolitionists. They will call you a cutthroat, pirate, sheep-stealer, and all the rest of their elegant little list of embellishments, all the same. You'll get a state of things that nobody can manage but yourself, and you by the hardest; and then you'll die, and it'll all run to the devil faster than you run it up. Now, if you would do the thing by halves, it wouldn't be so bad; but I know you of old. You won't be satisfied with teaching a catechism and a few hymns, parrot-wise, which I think is a respectable religious amusement for our women. You'll teach 'em all to read, and write, and think, and speak. I shouldn't wonder to hear of an importation of black-boards and spelling-books. You'll want a lyceum and debating society. Pray, what does sister Anne say to all this? Anne is a sensible girl now, but I'll warrant you've got her to go in for it."
"Anne is as much interested as I, but her practical tact is greater than mine, and she is of use in detecting difficulties that I do not see. I have an excellent man, who enters fully into my views, who takes charge of the business interests of the plantation, instead of one of these scoundrel overseers. There is to be a graduated system of work and wages introduced—a system that shall teach the nature and rights of property and train to habits of industry and frugality, by making every man's acquirements equal to his industry and good conduct."