Mr. Bradley had spoken to Griffith of all these things--of the hardships to both black and white--and of the possible outcome.
Over and over during the year, when they had talked of the proposed new move, he had urged these points.
"It seems to me, Mr. Davenport, that you are going to tackle a pretty rough job. You say you will take all of them as far as Washington, anyhow. Now you ought to know that there are no end of free niggers in Washington, already, with no way to support themselves. Look at Milt and Phillis and Judy and Dan, and those other old ones in the two end cabins! They've all served you and your father before you faithfully all of their lives, and now you are proposing to turn them out to die--simply to starve to death. That's the upshot of your foolishness. You know they won't steal, and they can't work enough to support themselves. All the old ones are in the same fix, and the young ones will simply be put on the chain-gang for petty thefts of food before you get fairly settled out west. Lord, Lord, man, you don't know what you are doing! I wish the old Major was here to put a stop to it. You're laying up suffering for yourself, you're laying up sorrow and crime for them, you are robbing your children of their birthright, and of what their grandfathers have done for them, you are making trouble among other people's niggers here who hear of it, and think it would be a fine thing to be a free nigger in Washington or Indiana--and what good is it all going to do? Just answer me that? It would take a microscope to see any good that _can_ come out of it. It's easy enough to see the harm. Look at 'Squire Nelson's Jack! He undertook to run off last week, and Nelson had him whipped within an inch of his life. Yes, bad policy, and cruel, of course, but that's the kind of a man Nelson is. Now your move is going to stir up that sort of thing all around here. It does it every time. You know that. What in thunder has got into the heads of some of you fellows, I can't see. It started in about the time you Methodists began riding around here. Sometimes I think they were sent down here just for that purpose, and that the preaching was only a blind." Mr. Davenport laughed. "Ha, ha, ha, ha! Bradley, you are a hopeless case! If I didn't know you so well, I'd feel like losing my temper; but--"