Charleston

  She tested the strings, adjusted a peg. “This song, set to a familiar patriotic air, comes from a Massachusetts antislavery hymnal.” She struck a chord.

  “My country, ’tis of thee,

  Stronghold of slavery,

  Of thee I sing…”

  She sang all six stanzas, her passion compensating for her untrained voice. Once more the roughneck tooted his horn. Another jingled sleigh bells. One of the committee members rose and cried, “Shame.” Others hissed until the rowdies quieted.

  Alex sang a second hymn, then put the banjo aside and launched into an account of her awakening in Charleston. She spoke of the workhouse and the treadmill; Lydia’s abusive ways and her harassment of Virtue that had led to her murder. She avoided names, but her descriptions were no less vivid.

  She spoke of her friendship with Henry, intolerable to certain Charleston whites. “Parties unknown murdered and horribly mutilated my friend. He was not a slave but a free man whose only crime was his color. They threw his poor tortured body into Charleston Harbor.” An audible reaction ran through the hall.

  “It was then I realized I couldn’t stand by and see such cruelty and intolerance defended and perpetuated. I knew I must leave the South, raise my voice, do my part to bring the wonderful day of jubilee.”

  She took up the banjo again, tested the strings, and sang “A Better, Brighter Morning.”

  “Oh, the old ways, they are dying,

  And the night is pushed away

  By a shining red horizon,

  ’Tis the dawning of the day.

  So take up the righteous hammer,

  Let the evil shackles fall,

  As the blessed beams of freedom

  Spread their beauty o’er all.”

  A few listeners began to clap with the beat, then more. Everyone knew the anthem; thousands of copies had been sold. She heard strangers whistling the tune wherever she went. She tapped her foot as she sang.

  “From valley green, mountain high,

  Hear the soulful, joyful cry.

  Meek and mighty, black and white,

  Praise the coming of the light.

  A better, brighter morning

  Is the glory that I see.

  Such a better, brighter morning

  On the day—all—men—are

  Free.”

  People rose to applaud, including a few courageous women. The horns and sleigh bells almost seemed part of the ovation. Alex bowed and returned the banjo to the chair, noting the furious face of the liverish man.

  She stepped to the edge of the stage; clasped her hands. “Another form of bondage exists in our country and it, too, must be addressed. I speak of the bondage of women unjustly kept from a full life by chains of the law, and chains of custom, fully as strong as the iron shackles of slaves, for all that they are invisible. We must—”

  The liverish man jumped up. “Hold on, woman. Your nigger cant is bad enough, but we won’t tolerate heresy.”

  “Heresy, sir?” Alex began. Someone shouted for the man to sit down; he paid no attention.

  “Yes, heresy. You and your scarlet sisters preach the devil’s gospel. My wife listened to one of your kind and she left me.”

  “Sir, I’m deeply sorry for your loss, but—”

  He outshouted her. “Are you godless? Don’t you read the Bible? You should obey St. Paul’s charge to the Corinthians—‘Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak.’”

  “Sir, conscience demands that I offer my message wherever and whenever I feel compelled. I’ll be happy to debate the issue privately if you just let me continue.”

  He pointed an accusing finger. “‘And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for women to speak.’”

  Alex appealed to the crowd. “Can we not persuade this gentleman to be courteous enough to give me a hearing?”

  “No hearing for a she-devil who destroys families.” The man’s hand dived in his pocket; a rock flew, gashing Alex’s forehead.

  She reeled back. Blood dripped in her eyes and onto her dress. She staggered, lost her balance. She sat down on the stage with an unceremonious thump, humiliated.

  The man threw a second rock that landed harmlessly behind her. Westerham and Reverend Drew rushed from the wings. Drew leapt off the stage, dragged the attacker into the aisle, and punched him twice. The man collapsed. Drew stepped on his neck. “Someone get this trash out of here.”

  Two committeemen rushed to remove the offender. Alex struggled to her feet, pressed her handkerchief to her bleeding forehead. Nicodemus Brown, the ex-slave, steadied her while Westerham dithered: “Oh, I am so sorry. The man is a deacon in his church but a known troublemaker.”

  “We’d better help this lady ’stead of talking,” Brown said.

  Drew climbed back onstage, his Byronic hair mussed. One of the committee members said, “You sure enough fixed his clock for him, Reverend.”

  “Men who abuse women deserve no less. Christian forbearance has its limits.” He picked up the banjo and followed Brown and Alex to the holding room, where Alex slumped into a chair. While someone ran for a doctor, a committee member found a pint of whiskey. She took a sip gratefully.

  The doctor arrived, examined her forehead, said it needed stitches. “My office is three blocks from here.”

  Reverend Drew said, “I have a carriage outside. Mr. Brown, please address the meeting while we take care of the lady. Mr. Westerham, put this instrument in its case and guard it, she’ll want it returned to the hotel undamaged. Miss Bell, can you stand?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then lean on me. I have your cloak.”

  The ride through the December dark was mostly a blur. The doctor’s wife came into the surgery to assist. The doctor gave Alex a wooden rod to bite while he sutured the gash. It hurt hellishly, but she didn’t make a sound. Presently the doctor stood back, wiped his hands on his apron.

  “There. Minnie, the mirror, please.”

  When Alex saw the stitches, she groaned. “I look like a rag doll sewn back together.” She noticed that someone had cleaned the blood off her hands. She didn’t remember. “What is your fee, Doctor?”

  “Nothing, young lady. We should pay you. Dayton has treated you abominably.”

  Reverend Drew drove her to the hotel. Her cloak hid her bloody dress. In the lobby he asked how she was feeling.

  “Fine, but I’d very much like a glass of wine, if I may be bold enough to say that to a pastor.”

  “Of course you may. Are you hungry?”

  “Famished.”

  “Then let me renew my offer of supper. I hear the hotel has a decent dining room.”

  Alex hesitated. He wasn’t the handsomest man she’d ever met, but he had soulful brown eyes, a certain dash, and obvious courage. She felt she owed him something for his gallantry.

  “I would like that, Reverend. First I must change my dress.”

  He bowed. “I’ll happily await your return. I have some observations about what transpired this evening.”

  Curious to know what he meant, she went upstairs. She hoped Henry would forgive her disloyalty, wherever he was.

  49

  The Come-Outer

  A sleepy waiter showed them to a table lit by candles. After they were seated Alex said, “I feel sorry for Mr. Brown, left to carry the rest of the program.”

  “Don’t concern yourself. I’ve heard him speak. He can enthrall a crowd for hours and never flag.”

  “You certainly quieted that heckler. I’m grateful.”

  “Rowed him up Salt River, as the saying goes. I consider it a privilege, and I have no congregation to criticize me. Indeed, it’s what some of them would expect of a come-outer.” So he’s one of those, Alex thought, startled. Drew snapped his napkin to unfold it. On the little finger of his right hand a heavy gold signet gleamed.

  The waiter presented menus. After discussing choices Drew ordered
squab, roasted potatoes and succotash, and a bottle of claret. “None of that Ohio frontier whiskey they lace with molasses and red pepper. I drank some in my wild youth. I was sick for days.”

  She laughed. He asked whether she missed Charleston. “Terribly,” she said. “My brother and my mother still live there.”

  “Would you go back?”

  “In an emergency. Never to live.”

  “Your history and your music are a rare combination, Miss Bell. You’re a unique witness for the cause. I must say I love ‘A Better, Brighter Morning.’ As soon as you wrote it, you must have known the whole country would sing it.”

  “Not the South, certainly. I really had no idea it would become so popular elsewhere.”

  “Brings you a lot of money, I don’t doubt.”

  “Yes, but I never intended that. I’ve always loved making up songs. I sang it the first time I appeared in New York City, at the Broadway Tabernacle. When the song caught on, a publisher came to me and we negotiated an agreement. I live on a small portion of the proceeds and donate the rest to antislavery groups.”

  “White people don’t usually play the banjo. It’s considered a Negro instrument.”

  “A slave in Charleston taught me to play and I never thought twice about it. The banjo came to these shores with the people we brought here in chains. It’s an American instrument.”

  The waiter set plates on the white tablecloth. No other diners remained; most of the candles in the room had been snuffed. The isolation comforted Alex, as did the claret, and Drew’s presence.

  They talked in an animated way about issues related to their common cause: the future of the troublesome Republic of Texas, whose white citizens wanted admission to the Union as a slave state; the possible outcome of the court case of the Africans who had rebelled and seized the slave ship Amistad—they were fighting to avoid extradition to Cuba and eventual execution in Spain. Inevitably, they discussed the dangers of their work, symbolized most vividly by the death of Elijah Lovejoy, a Presbyterian pastor, in Alton, Illinois, four years earlier. A proslavery mob had shut down Lovejoy’s abolitionist paper by murdering him and burning his presses.

  “Have you encountered violence?” Drew asked.

  “Not to any serious degree. I’ve been cursed and booed. In Albany someone threw a rotten cabbage. Fortunately it hit the podium, not me. I’m not naïve, Reverend. I know that our work can be dangerous. I was warned about it when I first volunteered. I accepted the risk.”

  Through it all Drew’s casual confession that he was a come-outer plagued her with curiosity. Come-outers were religious radicals whose disillusionment with their own churches led them to crusade independently. She wanted to know more. She began by asking how he’d become involved in abolitionism.

  “Well, it didn’t happen early, even though I was raised by parents who looked down on the Southern slave masters. I had no intention of becoming a preacher like my father until his brother, my uncle Nicholas, took me on a trip to Montgomery, Alabama, one summer. I was eighteen. Still at Harvard.”

  “Why Alabama?”

  “His wife, Aunt Bea, comes from there. Uncle Nick did business with her two brothers, owners of large cotton plantations. The arrangement assured Uncle Nick a steady supply of cotton for his spinning mill in Quincy. Uncle Nick is a hearty, happy man, completely in charge of his wife and family. To this day he seems carefree, unlike my father, who always bore the burdens of the world. I idolized Uncle Nick and Aunt Bea for a long time.”

  He touched his napkin to his lips; the gold signet blazed in the candlelight. “In Montgomery my eyes were opened. I began to grasp the connection between my uncle’s prosperity and the bent backs of Negroes. I saw one of Aunt Bea’s brothers inflict a horrible punishment on a fifteen-year-old slave. The boy was cat-hauled.”

  “I’ve not heard of that. What is it?”

  Drew’s cheerful demeanor was gone; he seemed to stare beyond her, to some dark place. He described the slave boy spread-eagled and prone, wrists and ankles tied to stakes. He described the black slave driver pulling on padded gauntlets and opening a croker sack in which a tomcat had been kept for an hour.

  “The driver grabbed the tom’s front paws and dragged him spitting mad out of the sack. Then he raked the writhing cat’s hind legs over the boy’s back ten times. The screams were indescribable. I still hear them in my dreams.” He drained his wineglass in one gulp.

  “After the trip I no longer admired my uncle. And that summer I became my father’s true son. Eventually a soldier in his cause.”

  “But you’ve left your pastorate,” she said.

  “Surely in part because of the loss of my wife at too young an age. Filomena had a fragile heart even as a girl. I was alone suddenly, and brooding. I felt that my church, liberal though it is, went forward too slowly in the fight against slavery. Too many of my parishioners were mired in gradualism. When I heard that Abby Kelley had left her Friends meeting in Boston and struck out on her own, something in me responded. Are you familiar with the Scriptural source of the term come-outer?”

  Alex shook her head.

  “Book of Revelation, chapter eighteen. ‘And I heard another voice from heaven saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye not be partakers of her sins.’”

  “So now you stand up and disturb worship services?”

  “I ask questions of the pastor and the congregation that they don’t want to hear,” he said. “How, for instance, they can show compassion and tolerance for Southerners who keep concubines and at the same time rant against the sin of brothels in their own city. Unpopular questions. It isn’t exactly a safe pursuit. I’ve been rowed up Salt River myself, by good Christians, several Sunday mornings. I’ve been jailed for disturbing the peace three times.”

  “And you’re a confirmed immediatist.”

  “The idea that slavery can be dismantled in some vague, gradual way is not only sinful, it’s impractical. Ludicrous. The time for abolition was last year. Last month. Yesterday.” He thumped his fist on the table; the silver danced.

  “Are you an immediatist, Miss Bell?”

  “I’m not sure. Often I believe so. At other times I’m doubtful. I wonder whether demanding an instant solution only makes achieving the goal more difficult.”

  “We certainly make it more difficult by introducing extraneous issues.”

  His quiet remark stung her. “Ah. Is that what you meant when you said you had thoughts about what happened this evening?”

  “Yes. Much as I understand your passion for the woman question, and admire your devotion to your married sisters, I believe it’s harmful. Advocacy of too many ancillary issues has isolated William Lloyd Garrison, until many in the movement want nothing to do with him. Secondary issues are divisive. They slow our progress.”

  “But tell me, Reverend—how can you separate issues of freedom? A woman in bondage to her husband is little different from a Negro enslaved by a white master.”

  “That may be so, but tonight you saw clearly that injecting the issue dilutes the primary message. Not incidentally, it also increases the danger to yourself.”

  “I have no fear or hesitation on that score. In any case I should think it’s my affair.” She spoke more sharply than she intended.

  He replied in kind. “I’m sorry, you’re mistaken.”

  “So you and I really don’t stand together, do we?”

  “No. I believe the cause mustn’t be damaged, which is what you are doing. Slavery is America’s greatest sin. No others compare. Slavery must be purged, washed away, very likely in the blood of our own citizens.”

  “Then I see no way to resolve this argument. Let me thank you for the fine dinner and excuse myself.” Under her anger lay disappointment. She’d enjoyed his company, and as a practical matter he was right. The woman issue created a schism in churches and antislavery societies. Yet she found him too extreme and dogmatic. She should have expected it of a come-outer.

  The fatigued waiter s
huffled to the table to say the dining room was closing. Drew paid the bill with a generous tip, then escorted her to the foot of the lobby stairs. “I’m sorry if I upset you, Miss Bell.”

  “We do disagree, Reverend. But I’ll always be in your debt for what you did this evening.”

  “Could we continue our discussion at another time and place?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. I never know where I’ll be from month to month.”

  “May I have your address, then? We could exchange ideas in writing.”

  “No, I think not.”

  “Because we disagree?”

  Without hesitating she said, “Yes.” It wasn’t the only reason. Further intercourse would be disloyal to Henry. She held out her hand. “Good evening.”

  She saw disappointment on his face as she turned away. She felt him watching while she ascended the stairs. In her room she lay awake for an hour, recalling details of their exchange and regretting its bad outcome.

  50

  Lark’s Fate

  In 1841 former congressman Crittenden Lark was fifty-two and showing it. Reckless living had enlarged his nose and his belly. To look more youthful he’d adopted the fashionable tonsure of the old Roman emperors: hair combed over the forehead and curled into ringlets on top. A brown paste applied regularly hid his gray hair.

  The Larks still were not considered part of Charleston’s elite. They remained solid members of the city’s commercial class. They occupied a handsome residence converted from two adjoining Federal houses, and kept a summer cottage on the Ashley. Lark had successfully invested the money amassed in his privateering days. He had little need to work as that term was commonly understood, but he lived with dissatisfaction. “Enough money” was a concept foreign to him.

  Over the years he’d quietly bought tracts of cotton land northwest of Charleston, where the Low Country rose gradually toward the sandy midlands. He’d profited handsomely during years of peak prices. More recently he’d picked up two thousand acres in the Mississippi delta, and joined a syndicate organizing to move into Texas.