The Minister's Wooing

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

It was to be confessed that Mrs. Scudder’s heart rather sank than otherwise at this announcement, and those who have felt what it is to be almost alone in the right, in the face of all the ‘first families’ of their acquaintance, may perhaps find some compassion for her; since after all, truth is invisible, but ‘first families’ are very evident. First families are often very agreeable, undeniably respectable—fearfully virtuous; and it takes great faith to resist an evil principle which incarnates itself in the suavities of their breeding and amiability; and therefore it was that Mrs. Scudder felt her heart heavy within her, and could with a very good grace have joined the Doctor’s Saturday fast.

As for the Doctor, he sat the while tranquil in his study, with his great Bible and his Concordance open before him, culling, with that patient assiduity for which he was remarkable, all the terrible texts which that very unceremonious and old-fashioned book rains down so unsparingly on the sin of oppressing the weak. First families, whether in Newport or elsewhere, were as invisible to him as they were to Moses during the forty days that he spent with God on the Mount. He was merely thinking of his message, thinking only how he should shape it so as not to leave one word of it unsaid, not even imagining in the least what the result of it was to be: he was but a voice, but an instrument,—a passive instrument through which an Almighty will was to reveal itself: and the sublime fatalism of his faith made him as dead to all human considerations as if he had been a portion of the immutable laws of nature herself.

So the next morning, although all his friends trembled for him when he rose in the pulpit, he never thought of trembling for himself: he had come in the covered way of silence from the secret place of the Most High, and felt himself still abiding under the shadow of the Almighty. It was alike to him whether the house was full or empty. Whoever were decreed to hear the message would be there; whether they would hear or forbear was already settled in the counsels of a mightier will than his: he had the simple duty of utterance.

The ruinous old meeting-house was never so radiant with station and gentility as on that morning: a June sun shone brightly, the sea sparkled with a thousand little eyes, the birds sang all along the way, and all the notables turned out to hear the Doctor.

Mrs. Scudder received into her pew, with dignified politeness, Colonel Burr, and Colonel and Madame de Frontignac.

General Wilcox and his portly dame, Major Seaforth, and we know not, what not of Vernons and De Wolfs, and other grand old names were present there. Stiff silks rustled, Chinese fans fluttered, and the last court fashion stood revealed in bonnets; everybody was looking fresh and amiable: a charming and respectable set of sinners come to hear what the Doctor would find to tell them about their transgressions.

Mrs. Scudder was calculating consequences, and, shutting her eyes on the too evident world about her, prayed that the Lord would overrule all for good: the Doctor prayed that he might have grace to speak the truth, and the whole truth.

We have yet on record, in his published works, the great argument of that day, through which he moved with that calm appeal to the reason, which made his results always so weighty.

‘If these things be true,’ he said, after a condensed statement of the facts of the case, ‘then the following terrible consequences, which may well make all shudder and tremble who realize them, force themselves upon us, that all who have had any hand in this iniquitous business, whether directly or indirectly, or have used their influence to promote it, or have consented to it, or even connived at it, or have not opposed it by all proper exertions of which they are capable—all these are in a greater or less degree chargeable with the injuries and miseries which millions have suffered and are suffering, and are guilty of the blood of millions who lost their lives by this traffic in the human species. Not only the merchants who have been engaged in this trade, and the captains who have been tempted by the love of money to engage in this cruel work, and the slaveholders of every description, are guilty of shedding rivers of blood, but all the legislatures who have authorized, encouraged, or even neglected to suppress it to the utmost of their power, and all the individuals in private stations who have in any way aided in this business, consented to it, or have not opposed it to the utmost of their ability, have a share in this guilt. This trade in the human species has been the first wheel of commerce in Newport, on which every other movement in business has chiefly depended. This town has been built up and flourished in times past at the expense of the blood, the liberty, and the happiness of the poor Africans; and the inhabitants have lived on this, and by it have gotten most of their wealth and riches. If a bitter woe is pronounced on him who buildeth his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by wrong (Jer. xxii. 13), to him who buildeth a town by blood, and establisheth a city by iniquity (Hab. ii. 12), to the bloody city (Ezek. xxiv. 6), what a heavy, dreadful woe hangs over the heads of all those whose hands are defiled by the blood of the Africans—especially the inhabitants of this state and this town, who have had a distinguished share in this unrighteous and bloody commerce!’ He went over the recent history of the country; expatiated on the national declaration so lately made, that all men are born equally free and independent, and have a natural and inalienable right to liberty, and asked with what face a nation declaring such things could continue to hold thousands of their fellow-men in abject slavery.

He pointed out signs of national disaster which foreboded the wrath of heaven: the increase of public and private debts; the spirit of murmuring and jealousy of rulers among the people; divisions and contentions and bitter party alienations; the jealous irritation of England constantly endeavouring to hamper our trade; the Indians making war on the frontiers; the Algerines taking captive our ships, and making slaves of our citizens; all evident tokens of the displeasure and impending judgment of an offended justice.