“What difference did their onwillingness make? The best, the right wuz done. The minority wuz wise and the majority wrong, as is dretful apt to be the case in this world. And the people wuz led through darkness, and sorrow, and onwillingness out into the broad sunshine. Led through Jordan’s stormy waves, out into ‘Canaan’s fair and happy land, where their possessions lay.’”
I had fell into that kinder melodius axent of mine almost entirely onbeknown to me, for it wuz from a him that I wuz quotin’. But it didn’t seem to impress Col. Seybert as I wanted it to.
He looked at his watch, and sez he:
“I have got a pressing engagement in just five minutes by my watch; I will bid you good-day.”
And he hastened off, and Thomas Jefferson laughed, and sez he:
“You talked him out, mother; but,” sez he, “I didn’t know as you believed so strongly in colonization; I never heard you talk just in this way before.”
“Wall,” sez I, “the Race Problem is such a enormous conundrum that it is hard to know jest how to get the right answer to it. But,” sez I, “I wuz a talkin’ jest now from Genieve’s platform, I wuz a viewin’ the subject from her standpoint, and from Victor’s, and also,” sez I, glancin’ to where that dear man lay, lookin’ pleasant as ever, “from Cousin John Richard’ses;” and I added, “considerable from my own.” And sez I, a turnin’ to Genieve where she sot quietly with Boy in her arms, “You don’t feel any oncertainty as to this conundrum, do you? You see your way clear to a right answer?”
“Yes,” sez she. And her eyes wuz as clear as two wells of pure water on which the stars wuz a shinin’.
“Yes, I know what is best and what will take place in God’s own time.”
There it wuz, no more doubt in her mind about the negroes havin’ a country and a nation of their own some time than there wuz to Moses as he stood on the mountain-top and looked over Jordan’s stormy banks into the land that should be the home of his weary and sorrowful people.