Freedom Road: A new edition with primary documents and introduction by Eric Foner by Howard Fast

Author:Howard Fast [Fast, Howard]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
Published: 1995-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

“The effect,” Gideon said, “of the two years right after the war was to wake us up. The bad black codes were made to drive us straight back to slavery. You see, the planters felt they could just push away the Union victory, and they were almost right. But it won’t happen a second time. We made a good and an honest alliance with the poor whites; we’re united now, and we got our eyes open. We got the power, and we mean to hold onto it.”

There were three of them at the dinner table, Isaac Went, the banker; Dr. Norman Emery, who had made a name for himself and Boston with his pioneering in the field of abdominal surgery; and Gideon. Emery was a tall, lean, dark-eyed man; he wore a pointed beard and pince-nez on a black ribbon; his appearance was deceptive, aloof, disinterested; by blood and marriage he was related to the Lowells, the Emersons, the Lodges. He had an incisive mind, a knife-like subtle humor with which he cut at Went constantly. As Gideon noticed soon enough, he was a humane man, though parsimonious and watchful of his humanity. Between him and Went, both widowers, there was a warm yet wary bond. Now Emery asked Gideon:

“But by what means, Mr. Jackson, do you intend to hold onto the power?”

“In three ways,” Gideon said. “First, by the ballot. There on every count we got the planters beat, twenty votes to every one they can find. Second, we are going to educate. All we need is ten years and in that time we raise up a whole generation of educated children. That, Dr. Emery is going to be our biggest gun. The planters taught us that way back, when they made it a crime for a slave to want education, even to learn himself. Third way is the land, like I said, like I told you. We’re a planting people down there, all of us; we ain’t—have not got the mills you got here. Folk live off the soil; man with a plough in his hands has bread and shortening in his mouth. When we get the land, when we parcel it out, when we set up a nation of free farmers down there, like you got here, then we stand on our own feet and talk loud and sure. Once that land’s our own, we are not going to give it up, never.”

“All right,” Went said. “Granted your utopian conception of a new south, granted all your fine dreams of schools. Do you want a tot of brandy, Emery?”

“I told you it’s bad for your heart. I’m sick of telling you that.”

“All right. I have little enough heart. Granted all you say, Jackson, it adds up to a legalistic projection of the future. Business is another matter. If you were to come to me asking for charity, I might help you, I might not, depending on many things. Understand, I’m not a soft-hearted man, not a sentimentalist.”

Emery said, “I think he realizes that, Isaac.

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