Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

"But," said Clayton, "Frank, I am in earnest, and you've got to be. I want you to go with me down to the depths of your soul, where the water is still, and talk to me on honor. This kind of half-joking way that you have isn't a good sign, Frank; it's too old for you. A man that makes a joke of everything at your age, what will he do before he is fifty? Now, Frank, you do know that this system of slavery, if we don't reform it, will eat out this country like a cancer."

"I know it," said Frank. "For that matter, it has eaten into us pretty well."

"Now," said Clayton, "if for nothing else, if we had no feeling of humanity for the slave, we must do something for the sake of the whites, for this is carrying us back into barbarism, as fast as we can go. Virginia has been ruined by it—run all down. North Carolina, I believe, has the unenviable notoriety of being the most ignorant and poorest state in the Union. I don't believe there's any country in old, despotic Europe where the poor are more miserable, vicious, and degraded, than they are in our slave states. And it's depopulating us; our men of ability, in the lower classes, who want to be respectable, won't stand it. They will go off to some state where things move on. Hundreds and hundreds move out of North Carolina, every year, to the Western States. And it's all this unnatural organization of society that does it. We have got to contemplate some mode of abolishing this evil. We have got to take the first step towards progress, some time, or we ourselves are all undone."

"Clayton," said Frank, in a tone now quite as serious as his own, "I tell you, as a solemn fact, that we can't do it. Those among us who have got the power in their hands are determined to keep it, and they are wide awake. They don't mean to let the first step be taken, because they don't mean to lay down their power. The three fifths vote that they get by it is a thing they won't part with. They'll die first. Why, just look at it! There is at least twenty-four millions of property held in this way. What do you suppose these men care about the poor whites, and the ruin of the state, and all that? The poor whites may go to the devil, for all them; and as for the ruin of the state, it won't come in their day; and 'after us the deluge,' you know. That's the talk! These men are our masters; they are yours; they are mine; they are masters of everybody in these United States. They can crack their whips over the head of any statesman or clergyman, from Maine to New Orleans, that disputes their will. They govern the country. Army, navy, treasury, church, state, everything is theirs, and whoever is going to get up must go up on their ladder. There isn't any other ladder. There isn't an interest, not a body of men, in these whole United States, that they can't control; and I tell you, Clayton, you might as well throw ashes into the teeth of the north wind, as undertake to fight their influence. Now, if there was any hope of doing any good by this, if there was the least prospect of succeeding, why, I'd join in with you; but there isn't. The thing is a fixed fact, and why shouldn't I climb up on it, as well as everybody else?"

"Nothing is fixed," said Clayton, "that isn't fixed in right. God and nature fight against evil."

"They do, I suppose; but it's a long campaign," said Frank, "and I must be on the side that will win while I'm alive. Now, Clayton, to you I always speak the truth; I won't humbug you. I worship success. I am of Frederick the Great's creed, 'that Providence goes with the strongest battalions.'

"I wasn't made for defeat. I must have power. The preservation of this system, whole and entire, is to be the policy of the leaders of this generation. The fact is, they stand where it must be their policy. They must spread it over the whole territory. They must get the balance of power in the country, to build themselves up against the public opinion of mankind.

"Why, Clayton, moral sentiment, as you call it, is a humbug! The whole world acquiesces in what goes—they always have. There is a great outcry about slavery now, but let it succeed, and there won't be. When they can outvote the Northern States, they'll put them down. They have kept them subservient by intrigue so far, and by and by they'll have the strength to put them down by force. England makes a fuss now; but let them only succeed, and she'll be civil as a sheep. Of course, men always make a fuss about injustice, when they have nothing to gain by holding their tongues; but England's mouth will be stopped with cotton—you'll see it. They love trade, and hate war. And so the fuss of anti-slavery will die out in the world. Now, when you see what a poor hoax human nature is, what's the use of bothering? The whole race together aren't worth a button, Clayton, and self-sacrifice for such fools is a humbug. That's my programme!"

"Well, Frank, you have made a clean breast; so will I. The human race, as you say, may be a humbug, but it's every man's duty to know for himself that he isn't one. I am not. I do not worship success, and will not. And if a cause is a right and honorable one, I will labor in it till I die, whether there is any chance of succeeding or not."