He did not dain a reply to me, but he kinder wheeled round in his chair and accosted Cousin John Richard. He hadn’t said a word to him—only when he wuz introduced to him he passed the usual compliments. But he had hearn about him a sight, I know, and his labors amongst the freedmen, and I spoze mebby half of his mean talk had been aimed at that good creeter a layin’ there on the lounge with a rug over his feet and three plasters onto his dear achin’ back.
And then he didn’t want to hear me talk any more—I could see that, and he branched right off onto another branch of the subject, and sez he to John Richard:
“I should think your preaching would have some effect if you are a preacher of Christ. You ought to teach the niggers to depend on the consolation of the Gospel, and you ought to preach the Gospel of Peace; and that means, I should think, to have the niggers obey their masters, and so save war and bloodshed, instead of inciting them to rebellion and putting absurd ideas into their heads about colonization and a country of their own.” He spoke in a dretful sneerin’, disagreeable tone, that madded me more’n considerable; but John Richard’s face wuz as serene as new milk, and he answered calmly, in a voice kinder low from sickness, but clear as a silver bell:
“The Book says, ‘There is a time for peace and a time to resist oppression.’”
And I spoke up agin, bein’ bound to take John Richard’s part, and keep him from talkin’ all I could, sick as he wuz, and them plasters all a drawin’.
I sez, “No doubt the colonies wuz preached to to set down in chains and enjoy religion, and give up all idees of independence; but our old 4 fathers couldn’t be made to feel so. They seemed to feel that the time had come when the Lord wuz a goin’ to lead ’em out into freedom. And they felt they wuz a preachin’ the Gospel of Liberty and Freedom, the backbones of Christianity, when they struck out for Independence.”
A KU-KLUXER.
Cousin John Richard looked real satisfied to me, though wan, as I went on, and sez he:
“Yes, to resist intolerable and unjust laws has always been considered lawful and right.”