Gabriel Tolliver: A Story of Reconstruction

by Joel Chandler Harris

Well, perhaps not all. There are black sheep in every flock, and wherever the nature of Adam survives, there we may behold wisdom and folly dancing to the same tune, and sin and repentance occupying the same couch. So it has been from the first, and so it will be to the end. But, take them all in all, making due allowance for the tendencies of human nature, the men and women who responded to the invitation of Raleigh Clopton may be described as the salt of the earth. They had all, women and men, been subjected to the trials and hardships of a war in which no quarter was asked or given; and their experiences had given them a strength of character, and a versatility in dealing with unexpected events, that could hardly be matched elsewhere. To each of those who responded to his invitation, Raleigh Clopton gave a part of his domain, and laid out their settlement for them.

This was the origin of Shady Dale. But to set forth its origin is not to describe its beauty, which is of a character that refuses to submit to description. You go down to the old town from the city, and you say to yourself and your friends that you are enjoying the delights of the country. You visit it from the plantations, and you feel that you are breathing the kind of atmosphere that should be found in the social life of a large, refined and perfectly homogeneous community. But whether you go there from the city, or from the plantations, you are inevitably impressed with a sense of the attractiveness of the place; you fall under the spell of the old town—it was old even in the old times of the sixties. And yet if you were called upon to define the nature of the spell, what could you say? What name could you give to the tremulous beauty that hovers about and around the place, when the fresh green leaves of the great trees are fluttering in the cool wind, and everything is touched and illumined by the tender colours of spring? Under what heading in the catalogue of things would you place the vivid richness which animates the town and the landscape all around when the summer is at its height? And how could you describe the harmony that time has brought about between the fine old houses and the setting in which they are grouped?

All these things are elusive; they make themselves keenly felt, but they do not lend themselves to analysis.

It is a pity that those who are interested in traditions that are truer than history could not have all the facts in regard to Shady Dale from the lips of Mr. Obadiah Tutwiler, who had constituted himself the oral historian of the community. Mr. Tutwiler was alive as late as 1869, and had at his fingers'-ends all the essential facts relating to the origin and growth of the town, and he related the story with a fluency, an accuracy, and a relish quite surprising in so old a man.

As was fitting, the old court-house, the temple of justice, had been reared in the centre of the town, and the square that surrounds it took the shape of a park of considerable dimensions. On two sides were some of the more pretentious dwellings; the tavern, with a few of the more modest houses took up a third side; while the fourth side was taken up by the shops and stores; and so careful had the early settlers been with the trees, that it was possible to stand in a certain upper window of the court-house, and look out upon the town with not a house in sight.

Naturally, the most interesting feature of Shady Dale was the Clopton Place. It had been the home of the First Settler, and in 1860, when Nan and Gabriel were enjoying their happiest days, it was owned and occupied by the son, Meriwether Clopton.

From the time of the First Settler, the Clopton Place had been dedicated and set apart to the uses of hospitality. The deed in which General McGillivray, in the name of the Creek Nation, conveyed the domain to Raleigh Clopton, distinctly sets forth the condition that the Clopton Place was to be an asylum and a place of refuge for the unfortunate and for those who needed succour. During the long and bloody contests between the white settlers and the Creeks, it was the pleasure of the Creek chief to pay out of his own private fortune, which was a large one for those days, the ransoms which, under the rules of the tribal organisations, each Indian town demanded for the prisoners captured by its warriors. Such was the poverty of the whites in general that only occasionally was General McGillivray reimbursed for his expenditures in this direction.

But no matter by whom the ransoms were paid, the prisoners were one and all forwarded to the Clopton Place, where they were cared for until such time as they could be transferred to the white settlements. In this way hospitality became a habit at the Place, and in the years that followed, no wayfarer was ever turned away from those wide doors.

In the pleasant weather, it was a familiar spectacle to see Meriwether Clopton sitting on the wide lawn, reading Virgil and Horace, two volumes of which he never tired. His favourite seat was in the shade of a silver maple, through the branches of which a grapevine had been trained. This silver maple, with the vine running through it, and the seat in the shade, were a realisation, he once told Gabriel and Cephas, of one of the most beautiful poems in one of the volumes, but whether Virgil or Horace, the aforesaid Cephas is unable to remember.

There were days long to be remembered when the Master of Clopton Place read aloud to the children, translating as he went along, and smacking his lips over the choice of words as though he were tasting a fine quality of wine. And the children felt the charm of these ancient verses; and they soon came to understand why words written down centuries ago, had power to take possession of the mind. They were charged with the qualities that brought them home to the modern hour; and for all that was foreign in them, they might have been composed at Shady Dale. It is no wonder that the common people in the Middle Ages clothed Virgil with the gift and power of a prophet or a magician.