“If we bring the question down to its primal cause,” said grandfather, “if we bring it down to its primal cause, Mary is right; for the cause being iniquitous, of course, the war is the same.”
“What is ‘primal cause,’ grandfather?” asked Betty.
“The thing that began it all,” said grandfather, regarding her quizzically.
“I don’t agree with your conclusion,” said Bertrand, pausing to put sirup on Jamie’s cakes, after repeated demands therefor. “If the cause be evil, it follows that to annihilate the cause––wipe it out of existence––must be righteous.”
“In God’s good time,” said grandmother Clide, quietly.
“God’s good time, in my opinion, seems to be when we are forced to a thing.” Grandfather lifted one shaggy eyebrow in her direction.
“At any rate, and whatever happens,” said Bertrand, “the Union must be preserved, a nation, whole and undivided. My father left England for love of its magnificent ideals of government by the people. Here is to be the vast open ground where all nations may come and realize their highest possibilities, and consequently this nation 40 must be held together and developed as a whole in all its resources, and not cut up into small, ineffective, quarrelsome factions. To allow that would mean the ruin of a colossal scheme for universal progress.”
Mary brought her husband’s coffee and put it beside his plate, as he was too absorbed to take it, and as she did so placed her hand on his shoulder with gentle pressure and their eyes met for an instant. Then grandfather Clide took up the thread.
“Speaking of your father makes me think of my father, your old grandfather Clide, Mary. He fought with his father in the Revolutionary War when he was a lad no more than Peter Junior’s age––or less. He lived through it and came to be a judge of the supreme court of New York, and helped to frame the constitution of that State, too. I used to hear him say, when I was a mere boy,––and he would bring his fist down on the table with an emphasis that made the dishes rattle, for all he averred that he never used gesticulation to aid his oratory,––he used to say,––I remember his words, as if it were but yesterday,––‘Slavery is a crime which we, the whole nation, are accountable for, and for which we will be held accountable. If we as a nation will not do away with it by legislation or mutual compact justly, then the Lord will take it into his own hands and wipe it out with blood. He may be patient for a long while, and give us a good chance, but if we wait too long,––it may not be in my day––it may not be in yours,––he will wipe it out with blood!’ and here was where he used to make the dishes rattle.”
“Maybe, then, this is the Lord’s good time,” said grandmother.