The Victim: A Romance of the Real Jefferson Davis

by Thomas Dixon

  VI

  REBELLION

  The mother's breakdown was not allowed to stop the Boy's education. Bothfather and older brother were determined on this. They would use theschools at home now.

  He was sent to the County Academy in the fall. The Boy didn't like it.After the easy life with the kindly old monks at St. Thomas, thisacademy was not only cheap and coarse and uninteresting, but the teacherhad no sense. He gave lessons so long and hard it was impossible tomemorize them.

  The Boy complained to the teacher. A lesson of the same length waspromptly given again. The rebel showed the teacher he was wrong byfailing to know it.

  "I'll thrash you, sir!" was the stern answer.

  The Boy would not take that from such a fool. He rose in his wrath, wenthome and poured out the indignant story of his wrongs.

  The father was a man of few words, but the long silence which followedgave a feeling of vague uneasiness. He was never dictatorial to hischildren, but meant what he said. His voice was quiet and persuasivewhen he finally spoke.

  "Of course, my son, you will have to choose for yourself whether youwill work with your hands only, or with your head and hands. You can'tbe an idler, I need more cotton pickers. You don't like school, try thecotton, I'll give you work."

  The Boy flushed and looked at his father keenly. It was no joke. Hemeant exactly what he had said, and a boy with any sand in his gizzardcouldn't back down.

  "All right, sir," was the firm answer. "I'll begin in the morning."

  He went forth to his task with grim determination. The sun of earlySeptember had just risen and it was already hot as he bent to work.Cotton picking looked easy from a distance. When you got at it, thingssomehow were different. A task of everlasting monotony, this bendingfrom boll to boll along the endless rows! He never realized before howlong the cotton rows were. There was a little stop at the end beforeturning and selecting the next, but these rows seemed to stretch awayinto eternity.

  Three hours at it, and he was mortally tired. His back ached in a dullhopeless pain. He lifted his head and gazed longingly toward the schoolhe had scorned.

  "What a fool!" he sighed. "But I'll stick to it. I can do what anynigger can."

  He looked curiously at the slaves who worked without apparent effort.Not one of them seemed the least bit tired. He could get used to it,too. After all, this breath of the open world was better than beingcooped up in a stuffy old schoolhouse with a fool to set impossibletasks.

  "Pooh! I'll show my father!" he exclaimed.

  The negroes broke into a plantation song. Jim Pemberton, the leader,sang each stanza in a clear fine tenor that rang over the field andechoed through the deep woods. The others joined in the chorus and afterthe last verse repeated in low sweet notes that died away so softly itwas impossible to tell the moment the song had ceased.

  The music was beautiful, but it was impossible for him to join in theirsinging. He couldn't lower himself to an equality with black slaves.This cotton picking seemed part of their scheme of life. Their strongblack bodies swayed in a sort of rhythmic movement even when they werenot singing. Somehow his body didn't fit into the scheme. His back achedand ached. No matter. He had chosen, and he would show them he had aman's spirit inside a boy's breast.

  At noon the ache had worn away and he felt a sense of joy in conqueringthe pain.

  He ate his dinner in silence and wondered what Polly was thinking aboutat school. Girl-like, she had cried and begged him to go back.

  With a cheerful wave of his hand to his mother, he returned to the fieldbefore the negroes, strapped the bag on his shoulder and bent again tohis task. The afternoon was long. It seemed at three o'clock there couldbe no end to it and still those long, long rows of white fleecestretched on and on into eternity--all alike in dull, tiresome monotony.

  He whistled to keep up his courage.

  The negroes whispered to one another and smiled as they looked his way.He paid no attention.

  By four o'clock, the weariness had become a habit and at sundown he feltstronger than at dawn. He swung the bag over his back and started to theweighing place.

  "Pooh--it's easy!" he said with scorn.

  The negroes crowded around his pile of cotton.

  "Dat Boy is sho one cotton-picker!" cried Jim Pemberton, regarding himwith grinning admiration.

  "Of course, I can pick cotton if I want to--"

  "But ye raly don't wanter?" Jim grinned.

  "Sure I do. I'm sick of school."

  Jim laughed aloud and, coming close, whispered insinuatingly:

  "I'se sho sick er pickin' cotton, an' when yer quits de job--"

  "I'm not going to quit--"

  "Yassah, yassah?--I understan' dat--but de pint is, _when_ yer _do_quit, don't fergit Jim, Marse Jeff. I likes you. You got de spunk. Iwants ter be yo' man."

  The appeal touched the Boy's pride. He answered with quiet dignity:

  "All right, James--"

  Jim lifted his head and walled his eyes:

  "Des listen at him call me Jeemes! I knows a real marster when I seeshim!"

  That night, the father asked no questions and made no comment on thefact that he had picked a hundred and ten pounds of cotton--as much asany man in the field. His deciding to work with his hands had apparentlybeen accepted as final.

  This thing of deciding life for himself was a serious business. It wouldbe very silly to jump into a career with slaves, coarse and degrading,just because a fool happened to be teaching at the County Academy. Hemust think this thing over. Tired as he was, he lay awake until eleveno'clock, thinking, thinking for himself.

  It was lonesome work, too, this thinking for himself.

  If his father had only done the thinking for him, it would have been somuch easier to accept his decision and then rebel if he didn't like it.

  He returned to the field next morning with renewed determination.Through the long, hot, interminable day he bent and fought the battle insilence. His back ached worse than the first day. Every muscle in hisfinely strung little body was bruised and sore and on fire.

  He began to ask if his father were right. Wasn't a man a double fool whohad brains and refused to use them?

  An idiot could pick cotton when the bag was fastened on his back. All heneeded was one hand. All he had to do was to bend, hour after hour, dayafter day, until it became the habit of life and the ache stopped.

  He could see this now, for himself. He smiled at the quiet wisdom of hisfather. He certainly knew how to manage boys. He must acknowledge that.He was quiet and considerate about it, too. He didn't dictate. He onlysuggested things for consideration and choice. It was easy to meet theviews of that kind of a father. He treated a boy with the dignity of aman.

  When the cotton was weighed, the Boy faced his father:

  "I've thought it all over, sir, and I'd like to go back to school."

  "All right, my son, you can return in the morning."

  He made no comment. He indulged in no smile at the Boy's expense. Hereceived his decision with the serious dignity of a judge of theSupreme Court of Life.

  The rebellion ended for all time. Teachers and schools took on a newmeaning. A lesson was no longer a hard task set by a heartless fool whohad been accidentally placed in a position of power. School meant thetraining of his mind for a higher and more useful life.

  Progress now was steady. The next year a new teacher came, a realteacher, the Rev. John Shaw from Boston, Massachusetts--a man of eventemper, just, gentle, a profound scholar with a mind whose contagiousenthusiasm drew the spirits of the young as a magnet.

  The Boy learned more under his guidance within a year than in all hislife before, and next full was ready to enter Transylvania University atLexington, Kentucky.

  The polite, handsome boy from Mississippi who had served anapprenticeship with his father's negroes in a cotton field, gave theprofessors no trouble. Good-natured, prudent, joyous, kind, manly, heattended to his lessons and his own business. He neither gambled nordrank, nor ming
led with the rowdy set. He had come there for somethingelse.

  He had just passed his examinations for the Senior class in July, 1824,when the first great sorrow came. The wise father whom he had grown tolove and reverence died in his sixty-eighth year.

  His thoughtful Big Brother came in person to tell him and break the blowwith new ambitions and new hopes. He had secured an appointment fromPresident Monroe as a cadet to West Point from the State of Mississippi.

  And then began the four years of stern discipline that makes a soldierand fits him to command men.

  But once in those busy years did the gay spirit within rise inrebellion, to learn wisdom in the bitterness of experience.

  With Emile Laserre, his jolly Creole friend from Louisiana, he slippeddown to Bennie Haven's on a frolic--taking French leave, of course. Thealarm was given of the approach of an instructor, and the two culpritsbolted for the barracks at breakneck speed through pitch darkness.Scrambling madly through the woods, there was a sudden cry, a crash andsilence. He had fallen sixty feet over a precipice to the banks of theHudson. Young Laserre crawled carefully to the edge of the rock, peeredover and called through the darkness:

  "Are you dead, Jeff?"

  He was suffering too much to laugh, though he determined to give anIrishman's reply to that question, if it killed him. He managed towheeze back the answer:

  "Not dead--but spachless!"

  Many were the temptations of rebellion from the friends he loved in theyears that followed, but never again did he yield. Somehow the thingdidn't work in his case.

  There was one professor who put his decision of obedience to the supremetest. For some reason this particular instructor took a violent disliketo the tall, dignified young Southerner. Perhaps because he was moreanxious to have the love of his cadet friends than the approval of histeachers. Perhaps from some hidden spring of character within theteacher which antagonized the firm will and strong personality of thestudent who dared to do his own thinking. From whatever cause, it wasplain to all that the professor sought opportunities to insult andbrowbeat the cadet he could not provoke into open rebellion.

  The professor was lecturing the class on presence of mind as thesupreme requisite of a successful soldier. He paused, and lookeddirectly at his young enemy:

  "Of course, there are some who will always be confused and wanting in anemergency--not from cowardice, but from the mediocre nature of theirminds."

  The insult was direct and intended. He hoped to provoke an outburstwhich would bring punishment, if not disgrace.

  The cadet's lips merely tightened and the steel from the depths of hisblue eyes flashed into his enemy's for a moment. He would bide his time.

  Three days later, in a building crowded with students, the professor wasteaching the class the process of making fire-balls.

  The room was a storehouse of explosives and the ball suddenly burst intoflames.

  Cadet Davis saw it first and calmly turned to his tormentor:

  "The fire-ball has ignited, sir,--what shall I do?"

  The professor dashed for the door:

  "Run! Run for your lives!"

  The cadet snatched the fire-ball from the floor, dashed it through thewindow and calmly walked out.

  He had saved many lives and the building from destruction. His revengewas complete and sweet. But deeper and sweeter than his triumph over anenemy was the consciousness that he was master of himself. He hadlearned life's profoundest lesson.