CHAPTER XII
On their way to the hall on the Bowery Gerrit Smith and John Brown pa.s.sed through dimly lighted streets along which were drifting scores of boys and girls, ragged, friendless, homeless, shelterless in the chill night. The strange old man"s eyes were fixed on s.p.a.ce. He saw nothing, heard nothing of the city"s roaring life or the call of its fathomless misery.
He saw nothing even when they pa.s.sed a house with a red light before which little girls of twelve were selling flowers. Neither of the men, living for a single fixed idea, caught the accent of evil in the child"s voice as she stepped squarely in front of them and said:
"What"s ye hurry?"
When they turned aside she piped again:
"Won"t ye come in?"
They merely pa.s.sed on. The infinite pathos of the scene had made no impression. That this child"s presence on the streets was enough to d.a.m.n the whole system of society to the lowest h.e.l.l never dawned on the philanthropist or the man of Action.
The crowd in the hall was not large. The place was about half full and it seated barely five hundred. The ma.s.ses of the North as yet took no stock in the Abolition Crusade.
They felt the terrific pressure of the problem of life at home too keenly to go into hysterics over the evils of Negro Slavery in the South. William Lloyd Garrison had been preaching his denunciations for twenty-one years and its fruits were small. The ma.s.ses of the people were indifferent.
But a man was pushing his way to the platform of the little hall to-night who was destined to do a deed that would accomplish what all the books and all the magazines and all the newspapers of the Crusaders had tried in vain to do.
Small as the crowd was, there was something sinister in its composition.
Half of them were foreigners. It was the first wave of the flood of degradation for our racial stock in the North--the racial stock of John Adams and John Hanc.o.c.k.
A few workingmen were scattered among them. Fifty or sixty negroes occupied the front rows. Sam had secured a seat on the aisle. Gerrit Smith rose without ceremony and introduced Brown. There were no women present. He used the formal address to the American voter:
"Fellow Citizens:
"I have the honor to present to you to-night a man chosen of G.o.d to lead our people out of the darkness of sin, my fellow worker in the Kingdom, the friend of the downtrodden and the oppressed, John Brown."
Faint applause greeted the old man as he moved briskly to the little table with his quick, springing step.
He fixed the people with his brilliant eyes and they were silent. He was slow of speech, awkward in gesture, and without skill in the building of ideas to hold the imagination of the typical crowd.
It was not a typical crowd of American freemen. It was something new under the sun in our history. It was the beginning of the coming mob mind destined to use Direct Action in defiance of the Laws on which the Republic had been built.
There was no mistaking the message Brown bore. He proclaimed that the negro is the blood brother of the white man. The color of his skin was an accident. This white man with a black skin was now being beaten and ground into the dust by the infamy of his masters. Their crimes cried to G.o.d for vengeance. All the negro needed was freedom to transform him into a white man--your equal and mine. At present, our brothers and sisters are groaning in chains on Southern plantations. His vaulting metallic tones throbbed with a strange, cold pa.s.sion as he called for Action.
The vibrant call for bloodshed in this cry melted the crowd into a new personality. The mildest spirit among them was merged into the mob mind of the speaker. And every man within the sound of his voice was a murderer.
The final leap of the speaker"s soul into an expression of supreme hate for the Southern white man found its instant echo in the mob which he had created. They demanded no facts. They asked no reasons. They accepted his statements as the oracle of G.o.d. They were opinions, beliefs, dogmas, the cries of propaganda only--precisely the food needed for developing the mob mind to its full strength. Envy, jealousy, hatred ruled supreme. Liberty was a catchword. Blood l.u.s.t was the motive power driving each heart beat.
Brown suddenly stopped. His speech had reached no climax. It had rambled into repet.i.tion. Its power consisted in the repet.i.tion of a fixed thought. He knew the power of this repeated hammering on the mind. An idea can be repeated until it is believed, true or false. He had pounded his message into his hearers until they were incapable of resistance. It was unnecessary for him to continue. He stopped so suddenly, they waited in silence for him to go on after he had taken his seat.
A faint applause again swept the front of the house. There was something uncanny about the man that hushed applause. They knew that he was indifferent to it. Hidden fires burned within him that lighted the way of life. He needed no torches held on high. He asked no honors.
He expected no applause and he got little. What he did demand was submission to his will and obedience as followers.
Gerrit Smith rose with this thought gripping his gentle spirit. His words came automatically as if driven by another"s mind.
"Our friend and leader has dedicated his life to the service of suffering humanity. It is our duty to follow. The first step is to sacrifice our money in his cause."
The ushers pa.s.sed the baskets and Sam"s heart warmed as he heard the coin rattle. His eyes bulged when he saw that one of them had a pile of bills in it that covered the coin. He heard the great and good man say that it was for the poor brother in black. He saw visions of a warm room, of clean food and plenty of it.
He was glad he"d come, although he didn"t like the look in John Brown"s eyes while he spoke. Their fierce light seemed to bore through him and hurt. Now that he was seated and his eyes half closed, uplifted toward the ceiling, he wasn"t so formidable. He rather liked him sitting down.
The ushers poured the money on the table and counted it. Sam had not seen so much money together since he piled his five hundred dollars in gold in a stack and looked at it. He watched the count with fascination.
There must be a thousand at least.
He was shocked when the head usher leaned over the edge of the platform, and whispered to Smith the total.
"Eighty-five dollars."
Sam glanced sadly at the two rows of negroes in front. There wouldn"t be much for each. He took courage in the thought, however, that some of them were well-to-do and wouldn"t ask their share. He was sure of this because he had seen three or four put something in the baskets.
Gerrit Smith announced the amount of the collection with some embarra.s.sment and heartily added:
"My check for a hundred and fifteen dollars makes the sum an even two hundred."
That was something worth while. Smith and Brown held a conference about the announcement of another meeting as Sam whispered to the head usher:
"Could ye des gimme mine now an" lemme go?"
"Yours?"
"Ya.s.sah."
"Your share of the collection?"
The usher eyed him in scorn.
"To be sho," Sam answered confidently. "Yer tuk it up fer de po" black man. I"se black, an" G.o.d knows I"se po"."
"You"re a poor fool!"
"What ye take hit up fer den?"
"To support John Brown, not to feed lazy, good-for-nothing, free negroes."
Sam turned from the man in disgust. He was about to rise and shamble back to his miserable pallet when a sudden craning of necks and moving of feet drew his eye toward the door.
He saw a man stalking down the aisle. He carried on his left arm a little bundle of filthy rags. He mounted the platform and spoke to the Chairman:
"Mr. Smith, may I say just a word to this meeting?"
The Philanthropist Congressman recognized him instantly as the most eloquent orator in the labor movement in America. He had met him at a Reform Convention. He rose at once.
"Certainly."