The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [60]
"Anyway, Tom, when you hear Lane speak, he’ll draw you in just the same as everybody. Jenkins said he talked like the very devil, and it’s true, he does. Folks just stand there with their mouths hanging open."
Thomas didn’t smile at this, though, nor was he very friendly to Mr. Bisket for the rest of the evening, which meant, in consequence, that Mr. Bisket followed him around, trying to get him to laugh at his sketches of the men he met in Topeka, but finally he fell back on saying, "Well, you should have been there. I wanted you to go. There weren’t enough there who spoke out against this Black Law. You haven’t seen Jim Lane go like we did. When he goes, he goes like thunder." Finally, Mr. Bisket offered to sleep in his wagon, and Thomas, this time, didn’t stop him.
I realized when we lay down for our rest that he wasn’t extremely pleased with me, either, though he was, as always, kind and courteous. He said, mildly, "Mrs. Newton, you always speak up for these western men who have no principles."
"You mistake them if you think they have no principles—"
"Principles that are cruel and evil, then, and against Christian charity as well as righteousness."
"You sound like Mrs. Holmes seeing the work of Satan all around her."
We settled into our bed tick and pulled up the quilts, for though the days were still warm, the nights were getting cooler. He said, soberly, "I try not to see it that way, but I’m tempted. In what way is the system of slavery not evil incarnate? In what way do the slaveholders not argue like Satan himself, talking themselves and others into seeing good where none exists? They’ve been lying about it for so long that they believe their own lies."
"But it’s their concern. Slavery is their institution and—"
"In Kansas, it’s our concern. And anyway, I knew free Negroes in Boston and Medford and on the ship. They were not men that deserved to be excluded."
"People like to be with their own kind. It’s more comfortable that way for everyone."
"There’s nowhere I’ve ever been where people may be with their own kind exclusively. And should I consider the Missourians to be my own kind? In what sense? A moral sense? A religious sense? Do they have the same habits as I do? Do they feel a regard for me? Or I for them?"
"Mr. Graves wasn’t so bad."
"Mr. Graves was willing enough to do a job for us, and entertaining in his way, but he himself said that when the fighting comes, he intends to stand back and watch. We may count on our friends only." He paused and glanced toward the door, then said, bitterly for him, "Some more than others, it appears."
My husband nestled down into the bed and pulled the quilts up to his face, as we always did. Even though our bed was on legs and off the ground, there was no telling about the vermin who would come in as soon as we slept.
But I did not want to let the subject drop. I sat up. "Are you saying that we must associate only with those who think like us in every particular? I don’t know if the Black Law is good in itself or bad. I haven’t thought about it. But perhaps it’s a wise step for the very reason Mr. Bisket stated."
"So that the other side won’t call us black abolitionists? I am an abolitionist. I don’t mind being called what I am and am proud to be."
"Husband, you are in the west now, not in Boston. Don’t you realize that westerners hate abolitionists? Abolitionists are people who... who... who keep turning over rocks and making everyone else look at what’s under there or, worse, smell it and touch it. Abolitionists won’t let anyone alone. Westerners hate that."
"Men and women and children are being sold for profit. They are being beaten and killed, wrenched from their families. Women are being used for breeding, like