Produced by David Widger
AN UNOFICIAL PATRIOT
By Helen Gardener
Author of "Is This Your Son, My Lord?" "Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?""Pushed by Unseen Hands," "A Thoughtless Yes," "Men, Women and Gods,""Facts and Fictions of Life," Etc., Etc.
Eighth Edition
R. F. Fenno & Company
16 East Seventeenth Street, New York
1894
AN UNOFFICIAL PATRIOT.
CHAPTER I.--A SON OF VIRGINIA.
Griffith Davenport was a clergyman. I tell you this at the outset, sothat you may be prepared to take sides with or against him, as is yourtrend and temperament. Perhaps, too, it is just as well for me tomake another statement, which shall count in his favor or to hisdisadvantage, according to your own prejudices or convictions. He was aSouthern man. He had been a slave-owner, and now he was neither theone nor the other. But in connection with, and in explanation of theselast-mentioned facts, I may say that he had been a law-breaker in hisnative State, and was, at the very time of which I tell you, evading thelaw in the State of his adoption.
Both of these facts were the direct results of having been born toslave-ownership, and, at the same time, with a conscience which was of,and in harmony with, a different latitude and heredity. I trust that youwill not infer from this last remark that I am of the opinion that theconscience of the Northern habitant is of more delicate fiber thanis that of his Southern brother, who is of the same mental and socialgrade; for nothing could be farther from either the facts or myintentions herein. But that it is of a different type and trend isequally beyond controversy. The prickings of the one are as regular andas incessant, no doubt, as are those of the other; but the stimulatingcauses have different roots. Perhaps, too, it may sound strange toyou to hear of one who can be spoken of as having a somewhat sensitiveconscience and at the same time as being both a law-breaker and alaw-evader. But certain it is, that with a less primitive conceptionof laws and of men, you will be able to adjust, to a nicety, theideas therein conveyed, and also to realize how true it is that times,conditions, and environment sometimes determine the standard by whichthe rightfulness or wrongfulness of conduct is measured, and that it isquite within the possibilities for a man to be at once a law-breaker anda good man, or a law-keeper and a bad one.
But I am not intending to warp your judgment in advance, and you are toremember that whatever my opinion of the quality of the Rev. GriffithDavenport's conduct may be, there is another side to the matter, andthat I shall not take it greatly to heart if you should find yourself onthe other side.
But if, as I have sometimes heard readers say--who looked uponthemselves as of a somewhat superior order--you do not take an interestin people who have placed themselves outside of the beaten pathway oflegal regularity, it will be just as well for you to lay this littlestory aside now, for, as I have said, it is a story of a clergyman, aslave-holder, a law-breaker, and a law-evader, which, I admit, does notat the first blush present a picture to the mind of a person in whom youand I, my lofty and immaculate friend, would be greatly interested, orwith whom we would care to associate for any protracted period. Still,I intend to tell the story, and in order to give you a perfectly clearidea of how all the more important events in this curiously complicatedlife came about, I shall be compelled to go back to the boyhood of youngDavenport, so that you may catch a glimpse of the life and training,which were a prelude and a preparation--if you do not wish to look uponthem as exactly a justification--of and for the later years of the life,which experienced such strange trials, complications and vicissitudes.
It was in the year eighteen hundred and twenty-four that the great seaof Methodism first began to beat with a force that was like that of asuccession of mighty tidal waves upon the previously placid State ofVirginia. Young Davenport had, at that time, just turned his fifteenthyear, but it was not until nearly four years later, when the tide ofinterest and excitement had swept with a power and influence impossibleto picture in these days of religious indifference and critical inquiry,into the homes and over the barriers of long-established things, thatyoung Griffith's home felt the invasion to be a thing which it behoovedgentlemen to consider seriously, or even to recognize as existing, ifone may so express it, in an official sense.
As I suggested before, it would be difficult, in these later and lessemotional days, when every school-boy knows of doubts and questioningsin the minds of his elders, to picture adequately the serene lack of allsuch doubts and questionings in Griffith Davenport's boyhood.
To be sure there were, and, I venture to assume, always had been,disagreement and disputes over forms, methods, and meanings; but thesewere not fundamental doubts of fundamental beliefs, of which it would beentirely safe to say that young Davenport had never in his whole lifeheard one little doubt expressed or intimated, or that a questionexisted that could tend to make any one suspect that there were or couldbe unsettled realms in the system and plan of salvation as laid down byChristianity. He supposed, of course, that Christianity was anincontrovertible, fixed, and final religion. Different sects he knewthere were, but all of these accepted the basic principle ofChristianity. All sprang from the same root. Some grew eastward, somewestward, and some made straight for heaven like the center shaft of agreat oak; but each and all were true limbs of the same healthful trunkwhose roots found anchorage in the bed-rock of eternal truth. He did notknow that there were other trees quite as vigorous and even moreexpansive, each of which had sprung from the seed of human longing tosolve the unsolvable. The "heathen" he had heard of, of course, in acondemnatory or pitying way, but he did not know or think of theirworship as "religion." It was "fetichism," idolatry, superstition. OfDeists, he had heard, if at all, but vaguely; for it must be rememberedthat in the year of our blessed Lord eighteen hundred and twenty-seventhe name of that famous Deist, Thomas Paine, who had done so much forthe liberty and dignity of the great new nation, was not honored as itis to-day, and, indeed, so dense was the philosophical ignorance of thattime, that the mention of the name of the author-hero of the Revolutionwas seldom made except in execration and contumely. Even of the Jews,from whom his religion came, Griffith had heard no good. They had slainthe Christ, had they not? Their own God condemned the act, did he not?
Young Davenport supposed that this was all true. He also supposed thatbecause of a blunder, made in ignorance and passion, in an age longpast, a whole race had ever since been under the chastising hand of ajust Jehovah, who had decreed that their humiliation and the expiationof the fatal blunder should be eternal. That there were Jews who wereto-day good, devout and religious who still approved the attitudeof Pilate toward the Christ, he did not know. He counted this class,therefore, as in some sort, Christians also. Mistaken in method, nodoubt; superstitious and blundering perhaps; but still secretly filledwith sorrow and shame for the awful crime of their race, and acceptingthe verdict of God and the disciplining punishment of time, he hadno doubt of their final acceptance of what he believed establishedas eternal Truth, and their consequent redemption and salvation. Theeasy-going, gentle Episcopalianism of his home-training, with itsmorning and evening, perfunctory, family prayers, its "table grace" andits Sunday service, where all the leading families of the county wereto be seen, and where the Rector read with so much finish and the choirsang so divinely, the same old hymns, week after week, had so far beenas much a part of his life,--and were accepted as mechanically,--as werethe daily meals, the unpaid negro labor, and the fact that his father,the old "Squire," sat in the best pew, because he had built and endowedthe finest church in the State.
All these things had come to Griffith as quite a matter of course; assome equally important things have come to you and to me--and not at allas matter of s
urprise or as questions for argument.
That his father, the old major, swore roundly, from time to time, atthe slaves, did not appeal to the boy's mind as either strange orreprehensible; so true is it that those things which come to usgradually, and in the regular order of events, do not arouse withinus doubts and questionings as do sudden or startling additions to ourdevelopment or intellectual equipment, when thrust unexpectedly inupon our ordinary surroundings. Such moral or social questions as wereinvolved in the ownership of slaves had, up to that time, producedno more mental qualms in the boy than have the same questions as toownership of lands or of horses upon you or me at the present time.
Jerry had been Griffith's own particular "boy" ever since he couldremember, and, although Jerry was the older of the two, it would bewholly unfair to all parties concerned not to state clearly and fullythat the righteousness and inevitability of the relationship of ownedand owner, had no more sinister meaning for Jerry than it had for hisyoung "Mos' Grif." So prone are we all to accept as a finality that towhich custom has inured us.
Was Jerry an Episcopalian? Most assuredly! Were not all of theDavenports members of the established order in all things? And was notJerry a Davenport? Not one negro on the whole plantation had ever forone little moment thought of himself as other than an Episcopalian,--inso far as the Almighty would permit one whose skin was black to be ofthe elect. They one and all felt a real and eager pride in the socialand religious status of the Davenports, and had never even harboreda doubt that they would be permitted to polish the harps and hold thehorses of that fortunate family when all should again be reunited inthat better world, where all might be free but not equal--for "as onestar differed from another," etc. No different dreams had ever, so far,visited master or slave.
"I could never be happy in heaven without Jerry," had settled thequestion in Griffith's mind, for of course his own destination was sure.And the negro felt equally secure when he thought, "Mos' Grif ain'tgwine ter go nowhah widout me. Nobody else ain't gwine ter take cahr obhim. Nobody else know how."
But the unsettling times which brought Methodism, in a great andoverwhelming wave, into the ranks of established things, brought alsomutterings and perplexities and awakenings of another sort. Arousedenergies, stimulated consciences, excited mentalities are ever likely tofind varying outlets. Progressive movements seldom travel singly, andso it came about that, mingled with the new religious unrest, therewere other and, perhaps you will say, graver questions so inextricablyjoined, in some minds that the one appeared to be the root and cause ofthe other.
"Is slavery right? If it is right for the laity, at least, is it notwrong for one who is an apostle of the Son of God, who had not whereto lay His head? Should black men be free men?" and all the disturbinghorde of questions which followed in the train of the new religion,began to float, at first in intangible ways, in the air. A little laterthey took form in scowl or hasty word, and at last crept into sermons,social discussions and legislative deliberations, as by degrees the echoof these latter floated down from Washington or filtered through othersources, from the Border States, where the irrepressible conflict hadarisen in a new form to vex the souls and arouse the passions of men.The pressing question of free soil or slave extension had already begunto urge itself upon the public mind and to harass the Border States,finding utterance for or against that Congressional measure known asthe Missouri Compromise Bill. Young Griffith Davenport had spent hisseventeen years in an atmosphere of scholarly investigation and calm,where little of even the echoes of these disturbing influences had come.His home was a comfortable one--indeed, the finest in all that part ofthe valley; the library quite unusual in extent and quality for thetime and place. Grif's tutor was a University man, his pleasures thoseof a country 'squire; for in Virginia, as in England, the office of"esquire," or justice of the peace, was wont to pass from father toeldest son, in families of consideration; and, indeed, at that early ageGrif's father had, by degrees, turned the duties of the office over tothe boy, until now no one expected to consult the "old 'squire" upon anyordinary topic. The "young 'squire" settled it, whether it were a disputeover dog-slain sheep or a misunderstanding about the road tax.
Upon this placid, "established" finality of existence it was, then,which descended a cyclone. Formalism in religion had run its course. Theprotest was swift, impassioned, sincere. Vigorous, earnest, but oftenunlearned men sprang into prominence at a single bound. Arguments arose.Men began to ask if the Almighty was pleased with forms in which thesoul was dead--if mere words, and not sincere emotion of the heart,gratified God. Was it worship to simply read or repeat the words ofanother? Must not one's own soul, mind and heart furnish the key, aswell as the medium, to aid in real devotion? Had the letter killed thespirit?
Young Griffith heard. The ideas fascinated him. Oaths from his father'slips struck him with a new meaning and a different force. Whereas theyhad been mere vocal emphasis, now they were fearful maledictions--andfrom a leading Christian, _the_ leading Christian of the county!
Griffith pondered, trembled, listened again to the new religiousteachers--to whose meetings he had, at first, gone in a spirit ofmild fun, not in the least reprobated by his father--and had, at last,tremblingly, passionately believed.