The President's Daughter (23 page)

She was a Unitarian and a native Philadelphian, daughter of a rich farmer and herself a teacher. Since her husband's death, she had devoted her considerable energy and fortune to the abolition of slavery, in the face of ridicule, physical threats, and social ostracism. She was a wiry, stern, soft-spoken woman of fifty-two, with a round, pretty face flanked by two bands of tidy sausage curls held in nets on either side of her cheeks, which were rosy and highly colored without the help of a rouge pot. Her eyes were robin's egg blue, with yellow retinas, and their enormous size gave them a permanent expression of ingenuousness which belied the sharp intellect behind them. She shared that intellect and the range of her knowledge with me during that crossing, making me feel that my real education had begun. For the moment, no woman had dared, or been allowed even if she had dared, to speak in public. But I had no doubt that when that time came, Mrs. Willowpole would be one of the most brilliant and impassioned speakers in the United States.

This small, determined, somberly clad lady would pace the deck, sometimes with a book in hand, often extemporizing and speaking into the wind, as if indeed she were in training for public speaking. And I listened, enthralled and appalled.

I blamed my father that my mother's intelligence had been unmastered and unhoned, growing uncultivated and melancholy in the wilds of Monticello, unharvested, squandered on the petty woes and intrigues of plantation life. This would have been my fate, I repeated over and over to myself, except for Petit and Mrs. Willowpole. Day after day she became more and more
precious to me. My schoolgirl mind and manners were slowly subjugated to a metamorphosis of Mrs. Willowpole's making.

Every night I cried, and every morning on deck, I listened to Mrs. Willow-pole expose her views on love, sensuality, charity, sex, and the state of degradation to which women were reduced: objects of pity or victims of madness. I began to wonder if I had been duped into believing I could overcome love.

“Only children should be innocent, Harriet,” she once admonished me, “but when the epithet is applied to men or women, it is but a civil term for weakness. Consequently, the most perfect education, in my opinion, is an exercise to strengthen the body and form the heart. In other words,” she repeated over and over again, “we must enable a woman to attain such habits of virtue as will render her independent. It is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason. Do you understand, my dear? This was Rousseau's opinion respecting men: I extend it to women. The illegitimate power which we obtain by degrading ourselves is a curse. Love in our bosoms takes the place of noble passions, and our sole ambition becomes inspiring emotion rather than respect and this . . . this
ignoble
drive destroys all strength of character! If women are, by their very constitution,
slaves
and are never allowed to breathe the sharp, invigorating air of
freedom,
they must languish forever like exotics and beautiful flowers relegated to nature.”

Mrs. Willowpole's soliloquies thrust and parried, retreated and advanced, crossed swords of wisdom and struck home with amazing precision. Often her words were sharper than the dagger in my pocket. I despaired of ever being the strong young female she was determined to make me into. I had too many secrets. I was, by her very definition, the opposite of all she stood for: a coward.

And as in a good novel, there was on board a true southerner, who expounded his ideas on the southern way of life and slavery. His name was James Henry Hammond, of South Carolina. He addressed himself mostly to a young Englishman, Lorenzo Fitzgerald, until he found out Dorcas Willowpole's opinions. There were three gentlemen besides Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. Hammond at our dining table: Mr. Elijah Stuckey, an Englishman, and two Americans, Mr. Desmond Charles of New Hampshire and the Reverend Moatley of New Orleans.

“I endorse,” said Mr. Hammond unexpectedly, “without reserve the much-abused sentiment that slavery is the cornerstone of our republican
edifice. At the same time, I repudiate as ridiculously absurd that much-lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that all men are born equal.”

There it was again, I thought—my father's Declaration, like a touchstone, the monument around which every question in America revolved. And for the second time in my life I was face-to-face with racial hatred as shown to other white people. This was what they really thought about us.

“I agree,” said the Reverend. “No society has ever yet existed, and none will ever exist, without a natural variety of classes. The most marked of these must be, in a country like ours, the rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant, the whites and the darkies.”

“What about the Christian and the infidel?” said Lorenzo Fitzgerald, twitting the Reverend.

“Why, yes. That too. I do believe red men have souls,” said Reverend Moatley. “I believe black men do as well.”

“Let's get back to the question at hand—slavery and property,” said Mr. Charles.

“That time does
not
consecrate wrong is a fallacy which all history exposes; the means by which the Africans now in this country have been reduced to slavery cannot affect us, since they are our property, as your land, Mr. Fitzgerald, is yours, by inheritance or purchase and prescriptive right.”

I flushed at the word
property
—where had I heard it the first time?
Tampering with my property …
my father, that night.

“Man cannot hold
property in human beings.”

“The answer is that he
can
and actually does hold property in his fellows all over the world, in a variety of forms, and he has always done so,” replied Reverend Moatley.

“I firmly believe that not only is American slavery
not
a sin, it is especially commanded by God through Moses and approved by Christ through his apostles,” said the florid, dark-haired Mr. Hammond, sitting next to Lorenzo Fitzgerald.

I'd heard speeches against slavery, been taught that it wasn't eternal; now I was going to hear one in favor. This was the first time I had encountered a slaver as a free woman. I didn't know what to do—or what to say. He seemed to be speaking only to me.

“You cannot deny that there were among the Hebrews ‘bondsmen for-ever.' You cannot deny that God especially authorized His chosen people to purchase ‘bondsmen forever' from the heathen, as recorded in the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus. Nor can you deny that a ‘bondsman forever' is a ‘slave.' Slavery is condoned in the Bible; that was His meaning, His revelation.”

“My plan for getting rid of slavery, that foul stain upon our American
character, is to find a country wherein to colonize the blacks,” said Reverend Moatley.

“Hear! Hear!” replied Mr. Charles. “Casting an eye over the map of North America, I behold in the West and Southwest a vast extent of country which is occupied by some wandering tribes of Indians and perhaps a few intruding whites. There is a large surplus of land that might be appropriated to the blacks and Indians. My first objective would be to secure that country,” said Desmond Charles.

“In other words, take the land for a colony of blacks away from the Indians that you've already exterminated,” said Mr. Fitzgerald. Here was the other argument, I thought. Exile and deportation, colonization. No one even considered the possibility of cohabitation. Never acceptance. Never.

“Exactly,” cried the Reverend excitedly, Mr. Fitzgerald's irony completely lost upon him. “The major part of the free blacks would immigrate to a country where they would be lords of the soil. Where they could sit down under their vines and fig trees and drink at the pure fountain of Liberty.”

“And who would compensate us for their loss? Would the United States pay reparation for our property?” intoned James Hammond. “It is a fallacy to suppose that ours is
unpaid labor.
The slave himself must be paid for, his labor all purchased at once and in advance, and for no trifling sum. Mostly paid, Mr. Fitzgerald, to
your
countrymen, which has certainly assisted in accruing some of those colossal English fortunes and splendid piles of architecture you English are so fond of.

“How unaccountable is that philanthropy which closes its eyes upon the English working class and turns its blurred vision to
our
affairs across the Atlantic. You people preach against decrees promulgated by God!” he concluded.

“We
British
have terminated it in our own colonies, and in England, and I pray for its early extinction in British India, but it is the United States of all the civilized world where irrational
fear
is the key to opposition to emancipation. Americans seem to believe in some kind of mystical super Negro of incredible potency and strength, a para-God whose wrath, if unleashed, would pull down the whole white race and white society. I ask you, if a government has sufficient force to keep a population of slaves of any description in subjugation, can't it
a fortiori
do this with a population of the same persons in a state of freedom?

“Enfranchisement does not increase the physical force of the Negro. It only takes away the chief motive for rebellion. He does not suddenly become a superhuman because he is free—exempt from the influence of legal authority. Accountability simply passes from the arbitrary power of the owner to
the equitable authority of the law. Every well-constituted community has the right to punish promotion of disorder or violence—the police have a more powerful influence, both moral and physical, than the slave master and are less likely to provoke acts of insubordination.”

“We are told they must be made Christians before they can cease to be slaves. I ask you, is the true way to win them to Christianity to keep them in slavery? And what about those who owe their freedom to being the object or offspring of a licentious intercourse without any preparatory instruction in religion and morals to fit them for freedom, except those of their guilty fathers? Freed by whim, by fantasy, usually with the master at death's door. Let's expose once and for all the hypocrisy of those who, while violating every principle of Christianity, clamor for the necessity of promoting Christian instruction.”

I gazed at Lorenzo Fitzgerald in surprise, petrified by his strange discourse.

“Our sole purpose is to apply moral sanction to the slaveholders themselves,” said Mrs. Willowpole meekly at last, unable to remain silent any longer.

“Sweet ‘moral sanction,' indeed. What slave has it freed? Supposing we were all convinced and thought of slavery precisely as you do. Do you imagine you could prevail on us to give up three billion dollars in the value of our slaves, and three billion more in the depreciation of our lands in consequence? Was any people ever persuaded by any argument, human or divine, to voluntarily surrender six billions of dollars? You see the absurdity of such an idea. Away, then, with your ‘moral sanction.' You know it's nonsense,” replied Mr. Hammond.

“Negro slavery,” said Mrs. Willowpole, rising to her feet, “is contrary to reason, justice, nature, the principle of law and government, and the revealed voice of God!” Her complexion had turned a bright scarlet, her lips trembled with emotion, and tears stood in the wide blue eyes. Her auburn curls seemed to have redressed themselves and stood out like mule ears on either side of her head. She seemed to grow in stature, rising and rising, and practically levitated from the holystoned deck of the ship's dining room.

I myself was quaking. I felt ill and too fearful to say anything. I had fallen into a venomous and bottomless vat of hatred and negrophobia I hadn't dreamed existed.

Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. Charles were on their feet as well, attempting to calm the dispute which was about to explode.

“Please, Mrs. Willowpole . . .”

“Mr. Hammond ... I beg you, sir . . .”

“There is no reason ...”

“Let us pray . . .”

“I'm afraid, Miss Petit, your chaperon is quite beside herself,” said Lorenzo Fitzgerald.

“She is perfectly lucid,” I replied coldly, staring down his horrified look. “Man-buyers are exactly on the same level with man-stealers. Because you know slaves are not—cannot be—honestly come by, what slave trader is more honest than a pickpocket or a brigand? Perhaps you say, ‘I do not buy my Negroes; I only use those left me by my
father. ‘
So far, so well, but is it
enough
to satisfy your conscience? Had your
father
a right to use another as a slave?” I said in my best, most seductive Virginia accent.

This time I grabbed Mrs. Willowpole's arm as tightly as a vise and steered her toward the door while Hammond sat there glaring, deliberately remaining seated. Then slowly, belligerently, he rose, his hands resting on the table.

“Allow me to say, ladies, that this is
exactly
why the female sex should not be allowed to meddle in public affairs. Your temperaments are not suited either for debate or for the contrariness of differing opinion. Let a man contradict you, and you fall back on your womanly prerogatives, enjoining the male to temper his argument with chivalrous considerations, which a woman
who holds the opinions of a man
is not entitled to. Speaking as a free white man, I assure you that my sentiments are those of every slaveholder in this country,” he shouted after us as we fled.

The operative and rotund vowels of Mr. Hammond's South Carolina accent piped us out of the door, along with the ship's rolling sea motion, which slammed it shut behind us.

We stood on the weather deck, leaning into the sea spray, shawlless and hatless and as breathless from the sharp wind as from Hammond's diatribe. Mrs. Willowpole was visibly shaken. Her placid face had taken on a scarlet tinge, and her breath caught in her windpipe in little hiccoughs like those of a scolded child.