Fifteen Days: An Extract from Edward Colvil's Journal

by Mary Lowell Putnam

"Ten years," I answered. "I was there for the first time about three years after Mr. Frank Harvey came back from Europe."

"I was there nearly twenty-three years ago. Frank and I had just left Harvard. We were both going to finish our studies abroad. We were to sail together. Frank must go home for a visit first, and asked me to go with him. I saw slavery then for the first time. I had heard enough about it before. We had just been through the Missouri storm. I did not find it, as it showed itself on Judge Harvey's place, 'the sum of all villanies'; though, perhaps, looking back, I may think it was the sum of all absurdities. I did not reason or moralize about it then. I was hardly eighteen, and took things as they came. But to judge of what has been done on that plantation, you should have seen it as I saw it in '21. Sans Souci would have been the right name for it. Not that I liked it the less. I made none of these wise observations then. On the contrary, I was fresh from the study of dead antiquity, and was charmed to find that it wasn't dead at all. It must be admitted, there is a certain dignity in the leisurely ease of primitive peoples, past and present. They seem to think that what they are doing is just as important as what they may be going to do. We moderns and civilized talk a good deal about immortality; but those simple folks have a more vital sense of it: they seem to be conscious that there will be time enough for all they shall ever have to do in it. Old Judge Harvey was a sort of pristine man,—about as easy and indolent as the negroes themselves."

"He was, indeed, of the old type. Formerly, I believe, planters—at least the well-born and well-reputed—were content, if their estates yielded them the means of living generously and hospitably, without display or excessive luxury. They took life easily, and let their people do the same. I have heard that Judge Harvey moved off here, from one of the older Slave States, when the money-making mania came in, hoping to keep up for himself and his people the primitive régime they had grown up under. I believe he was no advocate of slavery."

"The only forcible thing about him was his dislike of it. He had the greatest compassion for the slave of any man I ever saw, and with the best reason, for he was one himself. He was as much the property of his worshippers as the Grand Lama. He always entertained the intention of emancipating himself. But there were legal forms to be gone through with. To encounter them required an immense moral force. His hundred tyrants were, of course, all as happy as clams, and had as little thought of a change of domicile. So there was nothing to stir him up, and there was never any more reason for acting to-day than there had been yesterday. I must do him the justice, however, to say that he made provision for his son's living in freedom, in case he should choose it. In spite of the loose way in which the estate was managed, it yielded, as of its own free will, a pretty fair income. The old man spent little, and so put by really a respectable sum, half of which was to be employed in securing an independence to his son, and the other half in compensating his natural proprietors for the loss of his valuable services. Shaler was not original: the scheme he carried out in the end was old Judge Harvey's exactly,—if, indeed, it was his, and not his daughter's. I always suspected that it originated in the head of that little girl. You know Shaler and she were own cousins. The abolition vein, they say, came down from a grandmother. At any rate, Judge Harvey's plan, as he detailed it to me, was to colonize his blacks in a Free State, each with a pretty little sum in his pocket for a nest egg. He had taken into his confidence—— No, there was no confidence about it; the Judge was as liberal of his thoughts as of everything else; there was not an urchin on the place that might not have known what was planning, for the fatigue of listening; but the gentle flow of the Judge's words was heard as the notes of the birds and the frogs were,—with a little more respect, perhaps, but with no more inquiry after meaning. He had taken, not as the confidant, then, but as the partner of his day-dreams, a man who governed his estate for him,—as far as it was governed,—one of the blackest negroes I ever saw, and one of the cleverest, by name Jasper."

"Jasper!" exclaimed Harry.

"He has fallen from his high estate,—a Belisarius, only not quite blind. It is really almost touching to see him feebly fussing round doing little odd jobs of work about the grounds where he was once monarch of all he surveyed. At the time I speak of he was in his glory. It was worth while to see him holding audience,—according or discarding petitions,—deciding between litigating parties,—pronouncing sentence on offenders, or bestowing public commendation on the performer of some praiseworthy act. He carried on the farm in a loose, Oriental sort of way,—letting the people eat, drink, and be merry, in the first place, and work as much as they found good for them, in the second. With all this, he made the estate do more than pay for itself. It was he who carried the surplus up to Danesville to be invested. He was like the eldest servant in Abraham's house, who ruled over all that he had. Frank treated him with as much respect as, I dare say, Isaac did Eliezer. And I ought to mention that Jasper kept his master's son very handsomely supplied,—paid off his college debts too, without a wry look, though it must have come hard to subtract anything from the hoard. Our Jasper missed it in not having their schemes carried into effect when he might. He could have prevailed, as he did in regard to some other matters, by getting his master embarked in the preliminaries, and then persuading him that 'returning were as tedious as go o'er.' But possibly Jasper himself, having got the habit of power, did not like to lay it down; or perhaps he thought he must always have the store yet a little larger, seeing what Frank's wants were likely to be. And then it probably never occurred to him that a daughter could die before her father. At any rate, it was decided that the Judge should arrange the matter by will, things remaining as they were during his life. He never made a will, any more than he ever did anything else he meant to do. Did you know him?"

"I remember him only as a pale, exhausted old man, drawn about in a garden-chair by Jasper, who was almost as sad and humble-looking then as he is now."

"It was already over with his reign and his projects. All was at an end when Constance died. Her father broke down at once and forever. She was his very soul. When I was there she was only thirteen, but she was art and part in all her father's plans,—if, indeed, they were not hers. If she had lived, they would have been carried out;—though, as far as that is concerned, I believe things are better as they are. But her brother was as much her subject as her father was. There was a force about that gentle, generous creature! It was a force like that of sunshine,—it subdued by delighting. You did not know Constance Harvey?"

"I have seen her at Colonel Shaler's."

"She recognized what her father did not,—the necessity of some preparation for freedom. The law against letters did not exist then, I believe; I remember them, the great and little, painted on boards and put up round a pretty arbor she called her school-house. I don't know whether her pupils ever mastered them or not; but what certainly did prosper was the class for singing, and that for recitation. I had not seen much of men and things then, and had not learned to distinguish the desirable and the practicable. Even I came under the illusion of the hour, and dreamed liberty, equality, and perfectibility with the best. Not that Constance talked about these fine things, but she had an innate faith in them of the sort that makes mole-hills of mountains. Even now, looking back on that diligent, confident child, I seem to feel the 'almost thou persuadest me.' Poor Constance! She died, at twenty-two, of overwork. She wore herself out in efforts to bring her poor barbarians up to the standard her imagination had set for them."