Chesapeake (109 page)

CALHOUN:
It is when it deprives Steed of his rightful property.

ELIZABETH
: Paul Steed cannot own human beings.

CALHOUN
: The law says he can. Congress says he can.

RACHEL
: Then the law must be blown aside, the way winds of autumn
blow the leaves away. Once they were green, and once they served a useful purpose, but now it’s winter and they’ve fallen.

CALHOUN
: Instruct me. If Congress passes a law with strong teeth, requiring citizens in all parts of the nation—I mean Boston and Philadelphia and Chicago … These citizens must by law return all runaway slaves to their rightful owners.

RACHEL:
My God!

CALHOUN
: You’re not averse to taking the name of the Lord in vain.

RACHEL:
Is thee contemplating such a law?

CALHOUN
: It will be registered before this time next year. And what will you Paxmores do about it? I need to know.

GEORGE:
We will resist it with every fiber in our bodies. I say that as a resident of Patamoke. Thee can imagine what it will be like in cities like Boston. The entire—

CALHOUN
: Even if it’s the law of the land?

GEORGE
: If thee passes such a law, Senator, it dies of its own weight that afternoon.

CALHOUN:
It will carry jail sentences for those who interfere.

GEORGE
: Build very large jails, Senator.

CALHOUN
: I understand this might shock certain … well, Quakers like yourselves. But with the passage of time?

GEORGE:
Every day will intensify the resistance. I assure thee, Senator, thee cannot enforce such a law.

CALHOUN:
Then you foresee what I see? The possibility of war between the sections?

RACHEL:
We do.

CALHOUN:
But I thought that Quakers …

ELIZABETH
: Like thee, Senator. We live in confusion. We know of thy intense patriotism in 1812. And of thy strong Union sympathies in the years that followed. Thee was a different man, then.

CALHOUN
: The intransigence of the North forced me to alter.

ELIZABETH
: It must have been at terrible philosophical expense. (Calhoun shrugged his shoulders.)

GEORGE:
It’s been the same with us. Our family has invariably preached peace. But we had to go to war against the pirates. We had to build ships to fight the English in 1777. Our ships went back to war in 1814. And now we face an ever more terrifying possibility. It’s not easy to be a Quaker, and I suppose it isn’t easy to be a senator.

CALHOUN
: You’ll make no concessions?

RACHEL
: None.

CALHOUN
: You, young man. You haven’t said much.

BARTLEY
: I’m looking ahead. There isn’t much I’d want to say. (He indicated that under these circumstances, with Paul Steed listening, he had better remain silent.)

CALHOUN:
By this you want me to understand that you’ve already begun clandestine operations—the spiriting away of slaves belonging to other people.

BARTLEY
: If a runaway comes to my door, I shall always assist him.

CALHOUN
(to Elizabeth): Surely, if you follow the principles you’ve stated, you would not encourage runaways … or aid them?

ELIZABETH
: My religion would not allow me to steal another man’s property. But I would educate the slave so that he can gain his own freedom.

CALHOUN
: I’m glad to hear someone who defends property.

RACHEL
: Does thee really believe, Senator, that thee can perpetually hold millions of Negroes in chattel bondage?

CALHOUN:
It’s the law of nature, ma’am, and the law of this Union.

RACHEL:
Then war is inescapable.

CALHOUN
: Do you, the youngest person here, take it upon yourself to declare war?

RACHEL:
No, sir. Thee did that.

CALHOUN:
What do you mean?

RACHEL
: When thee said that slavery was immutable.

CALHOUN:
It is, my dear young lady. It’s the law of God, the law of any reasonable man. The Negro must be kept, he must be guided, he must have his food and clothing provided by someone.

ELIZABETH
: I can name one Negro right now who would be worthy of sitting with thee in the United States Senate.

CALHOUN
: No such Negro exists or ever will. Tell me, Mr. Paxmore, how do you see the next decade developing?

GEORGE
: I heard at my boatyard in Patamoke that when Daniel Webster was here …

CALHOUN
: Did he visit you, Steed?

GEORGE:
He’s supposed to have said, in answer to a direct question, that he would support a fugitive slave law with real teeth. He said that. Daniel Webster.

CALHOUN
: For once he showed good sense.

GEORGE:
When I heard this I concluded that there would be such a law, and that it would result in warfare between the sections.

CALHOUN
: Do you think the southern states will secede?

GEORGE
: Everything thee has said today leads to secession.

CALHOUN
: What could the South do, Mr. Paxmore, to alleviate the pressures that seem to be driving all of us in that direction?

RACHEL
(whose intrusion irritated the Senator): Offer a plan for the assured liberation of all slaves. Not immediately, perhaps, but certain.

CALHOUN
: I take it you read
The Liberator.

RACHEL:
When the postmaster allows me to have a copy.

CALHOUN:
Which is not often, I pray. So you want us to surrender our
property? Throw away the fruit of our labors? Steed here has nine hundred slaves, which he has paid for in the sweat of his brow. All of them to go?

RACHEL:
There can be no lasting peace until they do.

CALHOUN
: And go to what? To freedom as you and I know it? Never. If they ever do go, which God forbid, it will be to a new definition of slavery—deprivation, ignorance, charity in some new form. (Here he paused. Then he addressed Elizabeth.) If you know so much about the wrestlings of the Quaker conscience with the problem of war, then you must also know how assiduous a minority must always be in defending its rights. By and large, the people of this nation have not liked Quakers. Their pacifism in 1812 when we were striving to protect this Union irritated me considerably. But you have persisted because you knew that a prudent minority must defend itself against the tyranny of a majority. Isn’t that right?

GEORGE:
We have endeavored to exist without irritating others. That may have been our strength.

CALHOUN
: Precisely. The South is a minority striving to defend its rights. Because we have controlled the Senate, we’ve been able to do so. And I can see a time coming when the United States will be a minority among nations, and on that day it will use every device that the South uses now to protect its rights to existence. I fight for the future, Mr. Paxmore. I have a vision which—

RACHEL
: Does it include perpetual slavery for the black man?

CALHOUN
: The Negro will always be in slavery. I prefer the southern version to that which those at the North will impose.

They ate an early evening meal, listened to the bitter winds blowing in from the Chesapeake, and went to bed. In the morning everyone assembled at the wharf as John Calhoun departed for the Senate, and the great battles which loomed there, and his impending death. As the dark coat and the bushy head disappeared into the cabin, Rachel Starbuck Paxmore said, ‘One of the finest this nation has produced, and wrong in everything.’

No authoritative copy of the odious legislation reached Patamoke until the first week in October 1850, but when it arrived by packet from Baltimore for posting at the courthouse, everyone could see what Daniel Webster had done. George Paxmore, at the boatyard, refused comment until he had a chance to discuss the new law with his wife. At noon he left his desk in charge of his workmen, most of whom favored the bill, and sailed home to Peace Cliff, where he assembled his family in the kitchen.

‘They’ve passed something even worse than we had imagined,’ he
reported, taking out the notebook on which he had scribbled the main features of the bill.

‘Is it law?’ Rachel asked.

‘The law of the nation. Any slaveholder can go anywhere in the United States and recover whatever black man or woman he claims to be a runaway.’

‘Even to cities like Boston?’

‘Everywhere. States, territories, District of Columbia. Or land not yet a territory. All he has to do is state that the Negro is his, and his claim is established. The black man cannot testify on his own behalf. He cannot summon other witnesses.’

‘What can he do?’

‘He can listen attentively as the judge delivers the sentence returning him to slavery. Even manumitted men and women can be dragged back. Every United States marshal is charged with enforcing the law. And a new horror has been introduced. Every citizen must, on pain of going to jail, assist the marshal in capturing the runaway, or arresting the freedman, if the marshal orders him.’

‘Such a law is unthinkable,’ Elizabeth said, shaking her head in disbelief as she sat by the stove, hands folded.

‘It’s obviously not unthinkable,’ her husband said with unusual anger. ‘They’ve passed it. But we can make it unworkable.’

‘George! We must not be hasty,’ Elizabeth said. ‘We must pray for counsel.’

‘What did thee have in mind?’ Bartley asked his father.

‘We shall oppose it,’ Rachel interrupted. ‘With every power we command, we shall oppose it.’

‘That we shall,’ George said, his white hair quivering as his body tensed.

‘I think we should pray,’ Elizabeth said, and for some minutes they sat in silence, after which she said, ‘I must exact a promise from each of thee. There will be no violence. We cannot solve this problem with violence.’

‘But if a slave runs to our door, surely thee will help him escape?’ Rachel asked.

‘I will not deprive another man of his lawful property.’

‘But will thee step aside while Bartley and I …’

To this, Elizabeth agreed, and their home became a haven for the oppressed. Even in the Deep South word was passed: ‘You get Choptank, high white bank, Paxmores.’ If the slave could reach here, Bartley and Rachel would somehow spirit him to the Starbucks, where young Comly would lead him north to Pennsylvania.

The attitudes of the five Quakers involved in this escape route varied. Elizabeth, the tireless woman who had been fighting slavery for half a
century, believed that moral suasion was sufficient; she would teach slaves at considerable risk to herself; she would feed them at her expense; she would clothe them with shirts she had sewn; and she would medicine them and bind their wounds. But she would not encourage them to quit their masters, for that was deprivation of a legal right. She remained what she had always been: the quiet, traditional Quakeress, the teacher, friend and comforter, but no more.

George Paxmore would always contribute money; he would hide fugitives; and on occasion he would himself guide them to the Starbucks’. But he abhorred violence and would not even stay overnight with the robust Starbucks, who did not.

Bartley Paxmore, at thirty-one, was the new-style Quaker, engaged actively in fighting slavery and willing to take great risks with either his own life or that of fugitives. He was excessively daring and had pieced together an escape route right up the peninsula through the heart of the Refuge plantations. He had already made seven trips to the Starbucks’ and supposed that he would be making more, but like his father, he eschewed violence and would not go armed.

His wife Rachel was quite different. Like all the Starbucks, she saw slavery as the ultimate abomination and would make no concessions. If a slaveowner were to overtake her while she was leading slaves north, she would kill him; consequently, Bartley never allowed her to slip into dangerous situations. She was the goader, the encourager, the unfailing enemy of the slave-catcher, and it was often her unalloyed courage which gave escapees heart to try the last ten miles to the border.

Comly Starbuck not only refused to reject violence, he expected it, and was always prepared to fight his way clear if slave-catchers moved in. He was a sturdy young man, larger and stronger than Bartley, and dedicated to quite different ends: ‘When the South secedes, as it will, there must be a vast uprising of the slaves. Then we will tie this evil into knots.’ He expected one day to enlist in a northern army.

The principal opponents of the liberationists fell into three groups. There were the big plantation owners whose wealth was tied up in Negroes and who could always be counted upon to finance a chase. They were not brutal men, but they were deeply perplexed as to why a gang of northern agitators should be so bent upon depriving them of their lawful property. They wanted peace with the North, wanted trade to continue and multiply. The more prudent saw that as the United States stretched westward, the non-slave states must one day outnumber the slave by a large margin, and when that time came they wanted their inherited rights to be respected. On every subject except slavery they were reasonable men; like Paul Steed, their spokesman, they believed that for all men to be free, black men had to accept slavery.