An Unoficial Patriot

that you may know something of the early habits and surroundings of the man who, I began by warning you, became a lawbreaker; for, I hold it to be a self-evident fact that however true it is that here

ons, I will tell you as directly as I can the story of his offense; but first I must explain that when his coming marriage to Miss

ve found a girl of-well, one of the families you were brought up with. Mind, boy, I'm not saying anything

s with his son, and he hesitated to spea

h the people, and they begin to trust him! Infernal habit! I'd as soon live on a boat and just anchor from time to time in another stream and call it home-and-and living. I've come to respect your sincerity, Grif, but I can't respect the sense of a denomination that has no idea of the absolute value of stability, of continuity of association, between its pastor and its people. Why, just look at the thing! It uproots the best sentiments in both, and makes a wanderer of one who ought to be, not only by precept, but

"Has some redeeming qualities, after all, father, quite aside from the Bible teaching upon which the leaders of our church base it. There are men-even ministers, I'm afraid, whom one

iscipline." Jerry was filled with delight when told of the coming marriage of Mos' Grif. Jerry's own wife had long since presented him with twins, and it was his delight to

the itinerant Methodist clergy, at least, the ownership of slaves was wrong. He would never buy nor sell a human being. Upon that point his mind was clearly and unalterably made up. But Jerry and his family were to be a part of the new household while yet they remained, as before, the old Major's property. To this Griffith h

always did like you best-and since you have been gone so much they are a good deal of trouble to me. They've got to be cared for somehow. I wish you'd take them. They can do a lot of useful things if they are away from the others, and you can get twice as much work out of them a

em aside in his thoughts when he had settled or solved his own. He re

father, to help you; but I can't tak

brought up on a plantation to give all that up and go to a miserable little village. It is not decent to live that way! Cooped up with a lot of other folks in a string of narrow streets! I'd a good deal rather go to jail and done with it. Now, what I want and what I need you to do, is to take that other plantation-the one down, on the ri

fath

d-look here, boy, don't you think you owe a little something to your father? I'm getting old. You don't b

he watched with keen relish the troubled and shamed look on the face before him. G

d more sullen every year, and Lippy Jane's temper is getting to be a holy terror. She and Pete nearly kill each other at times. They had a three-cornered fight with Bradley's mulatto, Ne

fath

se, if you still have that silly idea in your head about not wanting to own them, but you have got to help me with them or-- Then damn it all, Grif, I don't intend it to be sa

h his voice trembling; "I-you ar

can't depend on you for a single thing? That's the question. Confound it all! I'm tired out, I tell you, looking after the lazy lot, and now you can take your share of the work. What am I going to do with the gang if I've got to watch'em night and day, to see that they are kept busy enough not to get into

the negroes preferred his own rule, and that they were happier and more tractable with him than with the old 'Squire. He knew that as the times had grown more and more unsettled and unsettling, his father had twice had recourse to a hired overseer and that

few years as he had read or heard the urgent questions of political policy which had now become so insistent in the newer border states-a future in which this life must be changed. Riots and bloodshed, he knew, had followed in the train of argument and legislative action. Slaves had run away and been tracked and returned to angry masters. But the basic question as to whether it was right for man to hold property in man had, so far, been presented to hi

the kind. Oh, no! I am not reflecting upon your integrity, nor your parsimony-although I have not observed any tendency you may have toward dispensing with your property by gift-but to other and more complicated and complicating questions with which you would have found yourself surrounded, and with which your private inclinations would have come into violent co

e coming struggle. But a wife's property was a husband's property in Virginia, in those far-off barbaric days, and so Griffith found himself in an anomalous position, before he knew it, for Mr. LeRoy had given Katherine her slaves as a marriage portion, and had

slaves, fairly if not fully. The will left "to my beloved son, Griffith, all the slaves now living with him, together with the farm upon which he now lives and the old homestead; with the admonition that he car

Griffith several children-three boys and a little baby gi

at they would not blame him for shutting them out from at least the inherited possibilities of the institution which had fallen upon him. But now, what could be done? The Major's will had thrown the task definitely upon him and had greatly increased the difficulties. He knew that it was against the laws of his state to free the negroes and leave them within its borders. Exactly what the terms of the law were, he did not know; but it was easy to realize its need and force. Free negroes were at once a menace to all parties concerned, both white and black. They had no work, no homes, no ties of restraint and responsibility. They were amenable to no one and no one was their friend. They could starve, or they could steal, or they could go North. If they did the first-in a land of plenty-they were not made of that stuff out of which human nature is fashioned, be that nature encased in a white or in a black skin. If they did the second they fared far worse than slaves-the chain-gang for home and the law for a driver has horrors worse than even slavery-at least so thought the colored man of 1852. But if they attempted to achieve the last of the three alternatives their lot was hardest of all. They must leave home, family, wife, children, parents and friends-all that made life endurable to a patient, affectionate, simple nature-and find what? Neither friends, welcome nor work! A c

ed, was a sorry and unhappy spectacle; but a freed sl

r aid his thought. Attuned to follow, she could not lead, and was equally unfitted to keep even step with him side by side. She did not share, nor could she understand, her husband's acute mental misgivings and forebodings. The few times she had spoken to her father of them, he had said that she need not worry. "Griffith is no fool. He'll get over this idiotic notion before long. It is reading those damned Yankee speeches that is the troubl