The Furies (35 page)

To a congregation with whom I was visiting, I lauded the senator’s courage in risking his reputation and, indeed, his treatment by posterity. I found about half of those gathered agreeing that Webster had taken a noble stand. But there are also those who resist all compromise. They will neither forget nor forgive the bayings of the abolitionists who accuse the south of being “one great brothel where half a million women are flogged to prostitution.”

Alas, the president himself, who should be the foremost spokesman of the cause of Union, favors a more limited program than Clay’s. He is jealous, they say, of Mr. Clay’s renewed notoriety! How mean and petty are the ambitions and angers of some men in high places!

March the 31st.
A giant has perished. The news was flashed to Richmond and brought on from there—yesterday, Calhoun succumbed to a lung sickness.

Against the advice of friends and physicians alike, he went to Washington earlier this month to address the Senate on Clay’s proposals. He was so enfeebled, he could not speak aloud. He sat huddled in a blanket in the chamber’s dreadful heat while Senator Mason read his remarks.

Calhoun could not embrace the Clay legislation wholeheartedly. He believed the north has made the south its hapless victim, abusing its people and abridging their rights—and it was in response to this stern view that Senator Webster pleaded for three hours.

When I first read of Calhoun’s reaction, I reflected again on the unfathomable purpose of God in creating a race of colored men. Without the existence of such a race, the old “Sentinel” might never have veered from the position he took in Congress nearly forty years ago, when he championed an improved system of national highways and waterways with the cry, “We are under the most imperious obligation to counteract every tendency to disunion!”

But the presence of the black man upon this continent—and Calhoun’s conscience, which not even the most rabid northern agitator dared call into question—slowly worked its change. Just before he fell out with Old Hickory over the Nullification issue, he had already replied to Jackson’s toast on Jefferson Day—“Our Federal Union! It must and shall be preserved!”—with one that expressed his own conviction—“The Federal Union—next to our liberty most dear.” After that, he swung ever closer to his final position—that slavery had somehow been vindicated as “a good—a positive good” and that any other view was “moral and political evil.”

To the end, he was a Unionist—but not at any price. Captain Tunworth is fond of quoting Calhoun’s remark during the debate on Wilmot’s Proviso—“I desire above all things to save the whole; but if that cannot be, to save the portion where Providence has cast my lot.” In his last appearance in the hall he loved, a sickly figure listening to another man read the outpouring of his heart, he remained true to his principles.

Shamefully, I cannot claim to have emulated him, except in these pages. I grow more and more circumspect in my remarks to Fan. She will grant that Clay’s compromise offers the one chance of averting a separation of the sort which sundered my Church. But like Calhoun, she will not admit there is any wrong in holding men and women in bondage. I fear to dispute with her because Gideon, Matthew and Jeremiah are in her constant care, I am gone a good deal, and she has stated without qualification that she will not permit the boys to hear any of my “softness toward the nigra.”

April the 10th.
Seldom have I heard invective to rival that which Captain Tunworth directs toward Seward of New York. During the March debate in Washington, the Whig senator referred to “a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain.” Nothing worse could have been said to inflame southerners, who insist the Constitution protects the rights of slave owners because of these words:

“No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.”

How I weary of hearing the captain parrot that passage! It is the foundation of his belief that the federal government must assist in returning escaped slaves. True, the word “slave” is not mentioned. But the captain says the meaning is unmistakable.

The failure of the abolitionist politicians to heed the clause—plus the passage, in some northern states, of those disputed “liberty laws” forbidding recapture of runaways—has led to the controversy which Clay’s new fugitive slave proposal would hopefully abate. Clay’s bill would in effect enforce the Constitution to the letter-But while men are struggling for peace, Seward rants of a law “higher” than the Constitution!

Seward, many say, has presidential ambitions. If so, he has destroyed himself with his statement. He has placed himself permanently among those the captain villifies as “no better, than mad dogs.”

In truth, Seward was already very nearly classified that way because of his membership in the Whig party. When Calhoun fell out with Jackson, he promptly joined the new Whigs, a faction opposing Old Hickory’s autocratic behavior. The faction took its name from the English party which traditionally fought against the unlimited power of the king.

For a time, the Whigs served the interests of an uneasy alliance of southern gentry and northern businessmen. They sought to curb the mounting power of the Jacksonian Democracy, which draws its strength from, and has become increasingly dominated by, persons of lower social standing. The factory class, as Captain Tunworth calls it.

But the Whigs have also come to be dominated and controlled by a certain segment of society—namely the abolitionist element. This drove Calhoun to abandon them and rejoin the Democracy. Thus by his party affiliation, and most assuredly by his statement about “a higher law,” Senator Seward has conjured a ghost which will hover close to him for years—and thwart whatever ambitions he might harbor.

April the 14th.
Returned from the circuit to find—again—no letter from my father.

Two of mine, sent to him in care of the postal office in Sacramento, have gone unanswered. His last to me from California, written in September, stated that he was journeying to a remote area in the hope of locating a profitable claim. I have heard nothing since.

I thought my father’s decision to leave Oregon would refresh his spirits and provide him with a new opportunity much needed since his farming efforts came to nothing. Now I think my enthusiasm may have been ill advised. Spent the better part of an hour praying he is safe and well.

April the 27th.
Damp weather has brought on a fever and confined me to my bed. The household is disturbed again because of the escape of a prime buck, Amos, belonging to a neighbor of Captain Tunworth.

The captain raged in our parlor for an hour this afternoon, his voice carrying up to the bedroom. He believes the operatives of the “freedom rail road” aided Amos in his flight. The captain will join the effort to recapture him.

April the 29th.
Some thirty miles above Lexington, the runaway was caught by a party of armed men which included Captain Tunworth. They came upon Amos wandering south instead of north. The illiterate slave had grown confused because the inclement weather hid the heavens and made it impossible for him to locate the North Star. Being incapable of reading written directions of any sort, he was following the star. When it was lost from view, he blundered straight into the arms of his pursuers.

All this I learned when Captain Tunworth returned tonight. He could not refrain from coming to my room to inform me of the details. He first described the crude pass, with the signature of Amos’ owner forged, which the slave had been carrying. Every black out after nightfall must have such documentation of his right to be abroad, or he becomes immediately suspect.

The captain and his associates interrogated Amos for nearly four hours, using all manner of inhuman persuasion, since it was obvious a literate person had provided the fugitive with the forged paper. My father-in-law said he and his friends suspect Syme, who operates a small granary on the outskirts of Lexington. Syme is a Connecticut Yankee by birth. He inherited the granary from a relative. He has been heard to remark in public that he loathes the “peculiar institution.” In an effort to make Amos confess the name of his abettor—Syme or someone else—the slave’s owner ultimately resorted to—

It sickens me to attempt to put the actual words on this page. They are an abomination to my sight, and to the eyes of Him who sees all. I will state the despicable truth as decently as I can.

Captain Tunworth’s neighbor employed a long knife. It was applied to the private parts of Amos, destroying his manhood and, soon after, his life. He bled to death without revealing the identity of his benefactor. May God have mercy on him, and on his master—

On Captain Tunworth, too. He sees nothing wrong in such base cruelty. He swore that if one of his blacks ever escaped, he would pursue him to the ends of the earth and punish him. Unable to contain my wrath, I ordered him from my room.

Approximately an hour later, when I called to Fan and asked her to bring the boys up to say good night, she refused.

May the 5th.
Itinerating again, I have been unable to banish the death of Amos from my thoughts. It has had a profound effect upon me, beyond all description. Last night, when I rose to offer a meditation at prayer service, I felt as if a mighty hand had seized me, shaking from my lips a condemnation of the cruelty perpetrated against the runaway.

A dozen in my congregation promptly left. Those who remained were obviously stunned and unsettled by the interjection of a secular subject, though afterward, three were bold enough to approach me and whisper their belief that I was right.

I fear repercussions but cannot shrink from them. Some Voice other than mine spoke from within me. I think the Almighty has finally decreed that I shall keep silent no longer.

May the 9th.
Household atmosphere most unpleasant following my return today. Fan has removed herself to a separate sleeping room. My sons barely speak at all; I fear she has harangued them in my absence—

Too grieved to write more.

May the 11th.
While doing an errand this afternoon, I was accosted by Syme. He is a small, unpleasant-looking man with a pocked face and nervous eyes.

He greeted me cordially enough. But then he began to speak in a curiously guarded way about my recent remarks at the prayer service, which are fully known in Lexington. I can tell from the hostile stares of those I previously called my friends. Twice I have been stoned by small boys—no harm done, though both incidents deepened my sadness.

A transcript of Syme’s words could never be used against him, so carefully and obliquely did he speak. Yet his meaning was unmistakable:

Should my conscience dictate a more active participation on behalf of the enslaved blacks of the district, he would assist in finding “a means for expression of my will.”

I rebuffed him. My affairs are troubled enough without embroiling myself in conducting runaways to freedom. He tipped his hat and departed, his manner as contemptuous as that of my father-in-law—though for an entirely different reason.

It becomes increasingly clear that a man of moderate views can find no peace in Virginia. Perhaps he cannot anywhere in the nation.

June the 3rd.
Unable to write a line for three days. Immense and stunning surprise fell on our house, coupled with immense grief.

My father is dead. Foully murdered in California. The news was conveyed by a visitor who has since departed just as she came—swiftly and forcefully as a summer storm. It was my cousin once removed, a handsome, splendidly dressed woman of middle years—the very woman for whom my father searched for so long. Her unexpected arrival, all the way from California in company with a thirteen-year-old boy of dark complexion and almost Latin appearance, plunged the household into confusion.

She arrived in a carriage secured at Norfolk. She brought much luggage, but there was no hired driver; she handled the reins herself. She goes by the name Mrs. Amanda Kent de la Gura, having been married to a Spanish fur trapper—the father of her son Louis, I presume. She did not specify.

She began her visit in a mood of cordiality and sympathy, relating how she had discovered my father by chance in the city called San Francisco. She described the manner in which he lost his life at the hands of some local toughs. She then stated she was on her way to Boston, but her exact plans were presented in only the sketchiest detail. I gathered she has some desire to buy back the family printing house, of whose existence I told her I knew.

During those first remarkable hours, Fan had the good sense to conceal all hints of the tensions that have divided our family. She treated my cousin once removed and her somewhat willful boy in a friendly and gracious fashion. Regrettably, Captain Tunworth was not so courteous when he called unannounced.

In ten minutes, he and my cousin developed an unconcealed dislike of one another. Mrs. de la Gura chanced to mention that she had employed a runaway slave in California, which caused the captain to launch a diatribe against those who harbor fugitives. My cousin’s retorts were caustic. If not an outright abolitionist, Mrs. de la Gura obviously approaches that persuasion. The captain departed in foul temper—and Fan’s restraint was visibly tried.

She abandoned politeness entirely next morning, when our guest put forth another revelation. Before his death, my father apparently became a partner in a modestly successful gold-mining enterprise. I am heir to his share.

Mrs. de la Gura, who prior to leaving California appointed a representative to act in her stead, urged me to permit her to continue managing my father’s interest. I told her I had no experience in business affairs, and so would be willing, provided any monies due my family were scrupulously accounted for. She assured me of it, promising that if she were given leave to administer my father’s share of the claim, my sons would benefit to a greater extent than if I were to take an active role.