An Unofficial Patriot

by Helen H. Gardener

It was a year later before the Rev. Griffith Davenport found himself in a position to carry out, even in part, a long-cherished plan of his. For some time past, he had been strengthening himself in the belief that in the long run he would have to flee from the problem that so perplexed him. That he would have to make one supreme effort which should, thereafter, shield him against himself and against temptation. This determination had cost him the severest struggle of his life, and it had resulted in the rupture of several lifelong friendships and in strained relations with his own and his wife's near kinsmen. It had divided his church and made ill-feeling among his brother clergymen, for it had become pretty generally known and talked about, that the Rev. Griffith Davenport had definitely determined to leave his old home and take his sons to be educated "where the trend of thought is toward freedom" as he had expressed it, and as his neighbors were fond of quoting derisively. He had finally secured a position in connection with a small college somewhere in Indiana, together with an appointment as "presiding elder" in the district in which the college was located. He had arranged for the sale of his property, and he was about to leave.

To those whose traditions of ancestry all center about one locality, it costs a fearful struggle to tear up root and branch and strike out into unknown fields among people of a different type and class; with dissimilar ideas and standards of action and belief. To such it is almost like the threat or presence of death in the household. But to voluntarily disrupt and leave behind all of that which has given color and tone and substance to one's daily life, and at its meridian, to begin anew the weaving of another fabric from unaccustomed threads on a strange and unknown loom, to readjust one's self to a different civilization—all this requires a heroism, a fidelity to conscience and, withal, a confidence in one's own judgment and beliefs that surpass the normal limit. But, if in addition to all this, the contemplated change is to be made in pursuance of a moral conviction and will surely result in financial loss and material discomfort, it would not be the part of wisdom to ask nor to expect it of those who are less than heroic. In order to compass his plans Mr. Davenport knew that it would be necessary to dispose of his slaves. But how?

He hoped to take with him to his new home—although they would be freed by the very act—several of the older ones and Jerry and his little family. He knew that these would, by their faithful services, be a comfort and support to his wife and of infinite use and advantage to the children, whose love and confidence they had. To take all into his employ in the new home would, of course, be impossible. He would no longer have the estate of an esquire. At first, at least, he must live in a small town. There would be no land to till and no income to so support them. The house would no longer be the roomy mansion of a planter. His income would be too meager to warrant the keeping of even so many servants as they were planning to take—and there would be little work for them to do. The others must be disposed of in some other way. But how? They are yours, my friend, for the moment. How will you dispose of them? What would you have done?

"Free them and leave them in the state of their birth and of their love where their friends and kinsmen are?" But you cannot! It is against the law! If you free them you must take them away. Sell them? Of course not! give them to your wife's and your own people? Would that settle or only perpetuate and shift the question for which you are suffering and sacrificing so much? And it would discriminate between those you take and thus make free and those you leave and farther fix in bondage, and the Rev. Griffith Davenport had set out to meet and perform, and not merely to shift and evade, what he had grown to look upon as his duty to himself and to them. It was this which had burdened and weighed upon him all these last months, until at last he had determined to meet it in the only way that seamed to settle it once and for all. He would go. He would free all of them and take them with him into the state of his adoption. He would then give hired employment to those he needed in his household and the others would have to shift for themselves. This he prepared to do. Some of them would not want to go into a homeless and strange new land. This he also knew. Pete was, as the negroes phrased it, "settin' up to" Col. Phelps' Tilly. Pete would, therefore, resist, and wish to remain in Virginia. Old Milt and his wife had seven children who were the property of other people in the neighborhood, and their grandchildren were almost countless. It would go hard with Milt and Phillis to leave all these. It would go even harder with them to be free—and homeless. Both were old. Neither could hope to be self-supporting. My friend, have you decided what to do with Milt and Phillis? Add Judy and Mammy and five other old ones to your list when you have solved the problem.

Mr. Bradley had spoken to Griffith of all these things—of the hardships to both black and white—and of the possible outcome.

Over and over during the year, when they had talked of the proposed new move, he had urged these points.

"It seems to me, Mr. Davenport, that you are going to tackle a pretty rough job. You say you will take all of them as far as Washington, anyhow. Now you ought to know that there are no end of free niggers in Washington, already, with no way to support themselves. Look at Milt and Phillis and Judy and Dan, and those other old ones in the two end cabins! They've all served you and your father before you faithfully all of their lives, and now you are proposing to turn them out to die—simply to starve to death. That's the upshot of your foolishness. You know they won't steal, and they can't work enough to support themselves. All the old ones are in the same fix, and the young ones will simply be put on the chain-gang for petty thefts of food before you get fairly settled out west. Lord, Lord, man, you don't know what you are doing! I wish the old Major was here to put a stop to it. You're laying up suffering for yourself, you're laying up sorrow and crime for them, you are robbing your children of their birthright, and of what their grandfathers have done for them, you are making trouble among other people's niggers here who hear of it, and think it would be a fine thing to be a free nigger in Washington or Indiana—and what good is it all going to do? Just answer me that? It would take a microscope to see any good that can come out of it. It's easy enough to see the harm. Look at 'Squire Nelson's Jack! He undertook to run off last week, and Nelson had him whipped within an inch of his life. Yes, bad policy, and cruel, of course, but that's the kind of a man Nelson is. Now your move is going to stir up that sort of thing all around here. It does it every time. You know that. What in thunder has got into the heads of some of you fellows, I can't see. It started in about the time you Methodists began riding around here. Sometimes I think they were sent down here just for that purpose, and that the preaching was only a blind." Mr. Davenport laughed. "Ha, ha, ha, ha! Bradley, you are a hopeless case! If I didn't know you so well, I'd feel like losing my temper; but—"

"Oh, I don't mean you, of course. I know you got to believing in the new religion and got led on. I mean those fellows who came down here and started it all when you were a good, sensible boy. And how do they get their foolishness, anyhow? Your Bible teaches the right of slavery plain enough, in all conscience, and even if it didn't, slavery is here and we can't help ourselves; and what's more we can't help the niggers by turning some of 'em loose to starve, and letting them make trouble for both the masters and the slaves that are left behind. I just tell you, Mr. Davenport, it is a big mistake and you are going to find it out before you are done with it."

Griffith had grown so used to these talks and to those of a less kindly tone that he had stopped arguing the matter at all, and, indeed, there seemed little he could say beyond the fact, that it was a matter of conscience with him. His wife's father had berated him soundly, and her sisters plainly stated that, in their opinion, "poor Brother Grif was insane." They pitied their sister Katherine from the bottom of their hearts, and thanked God devoutly that their respective husbands were not similarly afflicted. And, as may be readily understood, it was all a sore trial for Katherine.

At last, when the manumission papers came, Katherine sent LeRoy, her second son, to tell the negroes to come to the "big house."