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negro girl had been foisted upon him for a white woman, and he had almost committed the unpardonable sin against his race of marrying
The Southern mind, in discussing abstract questions relative to humanity, makes always, consciously or unconsciously, the mental reservation that the conclusions reached do not apply to the negro, unless they can be made to harmonize with the customs of the country.
He was only a youth. She was his first love, and he had lost her forever. She was worse than dead to him; for if he had seen her lying in her shroud before him, he could at least have cherished her memory; now, even this consolation was denied him.
Had her people been simply poor and of low estate, he would have brushed aside mere worldly considerations, and would have bravely sacrificed convention for love; for his liberality
But the one objection which he could not overlook was, unhappily, the one that applied to the only woman who had as yet moved his heart. He tried to be angry with her, but after the first hour he found it impossible.
I would never have sought to know this thing; I would doubtless have been happier had I gone through life without finding it out; but having the knowledge, I cannot ignore it, as you must understand perfectly well. I regret that she should be distressed or disappointed,—she has not suffered alone.
“You are black,” he said, “and you are not free. You cannot travel without your papers; you cannot secure accommodations at an inn; you could not vote, if you were of age; you cannot be out after nine o’clock without a permit. If a white man struck you, you could not return the blow, and you could not testify against him in a court of justice. You are black, my lad, and you are not free.
“but it says in substance, as quoted by this author, that negroes are beings ‘of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; in fact, so inferior that they have no rights which the white man is bound to respect, and that the negro may justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.’ That is the law of this nation, and that is the reason why you cannot be a lawyer.”
‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,’ says the poet. Somewhere, sometime, you had a black ancestor. One drop of black blood makes the whole man black.”
“I had thought,” said the lad, “that I might pass for white. There are white people darker than I am.”
“Here you have started as black, and must remain so. But if you wish to move away, and sink your past into oblivion, the case might be different. Let us see what the law is; you might not need it if you went far enough, but it is well enough to be within it—liberty is sweeter when founded securely on the law.”
“you need not be black, away from Patesville. You have the somewhat unusual privilege, it seems, of choosing between two races, and if you are a lad of spirit, as I think you are, it will not take you long to make your choice. As you have all the features of a white man, you would, at least in South Carolina, have simply to assume the place and exercise the privileges of a white man. You might, of course, do the same thing anywhere, as long as no one knew your origin. But the matter has been adjudicated there in several cases, and on the whole I think South Carolina is the place for you.
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“From this time on,” said the boy, “I am white.” “Softly, softly, my Caucasian fellow citizen,” returned the judge, chuckling with quiet amusement. “You are white in the abstract, before the law. You may cherish the fact in secret, but I would not advise you to proclaim it openly just yet. You must wait until you go away—to South Carolina.”
When he had made the scar upon her arm, by the same token she had branded him her slave forever; when he had saved her from a watery grave, he had given his life to her.
the human race, which is bigger and broader than Celt or Saxon, barbarian or Greek, Jew or Gentile, black or white; for we are all children of a common Father, forget it as we may, and each one of us is in some measure his brother’s keeper.
I would not marry him if I were white, or he were as I am. He did not love me—or he would have acted differently. He might have loved me and have left me—he could not have loved me and have looked at me so!”
“God is too often a convenient stalking-horse for human selfishness.
Why should I seek the society of people whose friendship—and love—one little word can turn to scorn?
“She ought to have been born white,” he muttered, adding weakly, “I would to God that I had never found her out!”
Drawing near the bridge that crossed the river to the town, he pictured to himself a pale girl, with sorrowful, tear-stained eyes, pining away in the old gray house behind the cedars for love of him, dying, perhaps, of a broken heart. He would hasten to her; he would dry her tears with kisses; he would express sorrow for his cruelty.
If he could not marry her, he would never marry any one else;
it would be cruel for him to seek happiness while she was denied it,
He would not let his darling die of grief, whatever the price must be paid for her salvation.
The free colored people of Patesville were numerous enough before the war to have their own “society,” and human enough to despise those who did not possess advantages equal to their
own; and at this time they still looked down upon those who had once been held in bondage.
