Page:Dred, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp Volume 1.djvu/33

Rh must swear always to find truth in a certain formula; and living, prosperity, success, reputation, will all be pledged on my finding it there. I tell you I should, if I followed my own conscience, preach myself out of pulpits quicker than I should plead out at the bar."

"Lord help you, Clayton! What will you do? Will you settle down on your plantation, and raise cotton and sell niggers? I'm expecting to hear, every minute, that you've subscribed for the Liberator, and are going to turn Abolitionist."

"I do mean to settle down on my plantation, but not to raise cotton or negroes as a chief end of man. I do take the Liberator, because I'm a free man, and have a right to take what I have a mind to. I don't agree with Garrison, because I think I know more about the matter, where I stand, than he does, or can, where he stands. But it's his right, as an honest man, to say what he thinks; and I should use it in his place. If I saw things as he does, I should be an Abolitionist. But I don't."

"That's a mercy, at least," said Russel, "to a man with your taste for martyrdom. But what are you going to do?"

"What any Christian man should do who finds four hundred odd of his fellow men and women placed in a state of absolute dependence on him. I'm going to educate and fit them for freedom. There isn't a sublimer power on earth than God has given to us masters. The law gives us absolute and unlimited control. A plantation such as a plantation might be would be 'alight to lighten the gentiles.' There is a wonderful and beautiful development locked up in this Ethiopian race, and it is worth being a life-object to unlock it. The raising of cotton is to be the least of the thing. I regard my plantation as a sphere for raising men and women, and demonstrating the capabilities of a race."

"Selah!" said Russel.

Clayton looked angry.

"I beg your pardon, Clayton. This is all superb,