The principle that moves him to atone is
crushed by the very perplexity of the law that compels him to do
wrong. "There's what goads me," he says: "it is the system, the
forced condition making one man merchandise, and giving another
power to continue him as such." He arises from the table, his face
flushed with excitement, and in silence paces the room to and fro
for several minutes. Every now and then he watches at the
window,--looks out towards the river, and again at the pine-woods
forming a belt in the background, as if he expected some one from
that direction. The serene scene without, calm and beautiful,
contrasting with the perplexity that surrounded him within,
brought the reality of the change which must soon take place in his
affairs more vividly to his mind.
"Your feelings have been stimulated and modified by education; they
are keenly sensitive to right,--to justice between man and man. Those
are the beautiful results of early instruction. New England
education! It founds a principle for doing good; it needs no
contingencies to rouse it to action. You can view slavery with the
unprejudiced eye of a philosopher. Listen to what I am about to say:
but a few months have passed since I thought myself a man of
affluence, and now nothing but the inroads of penury are upon me.
The cholera (that scourge of a southern plantation) is again
sweeping the district: I cannot expect to escape it, and I am in the
hands of a greater scourge than the cholera,--a slow death-broker.
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