The Crisis

THE CRISIS

* * *

WINSTON CHURCHILL

*

The Crisis
First published in 1901
ISBN 978-1-62013-155-8
Duke Classics
© 2013 Duke Classics and its licensors. All rights reserved.

While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in this edition, Duke Classics does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. Duke Classics does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book.

Contents

*

BOOK I
Chapter I - Which Deals with Origins
Chapter II - The Mole
Chapter III - The Unattainable Simplicity
Chapter IV - Black Cattle
Chapter V - The First Spark Passes
Chapter VI - Silas Whipple
Chapter VII - Callers
Chapter VIII - Bellegarde
Chapter IX - A Quiet Sunday in Locust Street
Chapter X - The Little House
Chapter XI - The Invitation
Chapter XII - "Miss Jinny"
Chapter XIII - The Party
BOOK II
Chapter I - Raw Material
Chapter II - Abraham Lincoln
Chapter III - In Which Stephen Learns Something
Chapter IV - The Question
Chapter V - The Crisis
Chapter VI - Glencoe
Chapter VII - An Excursion
Chapter VIII - The Colonel is Warned
Chapter IX - Signs of the Times
Chapter X - Richter's Scar
Chapter XI - How a Prince Came
Chapter XII - Into Which a Potentate Comes
Chapter XIII - At Mr. Brinsmade's Gate
Chapter XIV - The Breach Becomes Too Wide Abraham Lincoln!
Chapter XV - Mutterings
Chapter XVI - The Guns of Sumter
Chapter XVII - Camp Jackson
Chapter XVIII - The Stone that is Rejected
Chapter XIX - The Tenth of May
Chapter XX - In the Arsenal
Chapter XXI - The Stampede
Chapter XXII - The Straining of Another Friendship
Chapter XXIII - Of Clarence
BOOK III
Chapter I - Introducing a Capitalist
Chapter II - News from Clarence
Chapter III - The Scourge of War
Chapter IV - The List of Sixty
Chapter V - The Auction
Chapter VI - Eliphalet Plays His Trumps
Chapter VII - With the Armies of the West
Chapter VIII - A Strange Meeting
Chapter XI - Bellegarde Once More
Chapter X - In Judge Whipple's Office
Chapter XI - Lead, Kindly Light
Chapter XII - The Last Card
Chapter XIII - From the Letters of Major Stephen Brice
Chapter XIV - The Same, Continued
Chapter XV - Man of Sorrow
Chapter XVI - Annapolis
Afterword

BOOK I

*

Chapter I - Which Deals with Origins

*

Faithfully to relate how Eliphalet Hopper came try St. Louis is to betray no secret. Mr. Hopper is wont to tell the story now, when his daughter-in-law is not by; and sometimes he tells it in her presence, for he is a shameless and determined old party who denies the divine right of Boston, and has taken again to chewing tobacco.

When Eliphalet came to town, his son's wife, Mrs. Samuel D. (or S. Dwyer as she is beginning to call herself), was not born. Gentlemen of Cavalier and Puritan descent had not yet begun to arrive at the Planters' House, to buy hunting shirts and broad rims, belts and bowies, and depart quietly for Kansas, there to indulge in that; most pleasurable of Anglo-Saxon pastimes, a free fight. Mr. Douglas had not thrown his bone of Local Sovereignty to the sleeping dogs of war.

To return to Eliphalet's arrival,—a picture which has much that is interesting in it. Behold the friendless boy he stands in the prow of the great steamboat 'Louisiana' of a scorching summer morning, and looks with something of a nameless disquiet on the chocolate waters of the Mississippi. There have been other sights, since passing Louisville, which might have disgusted a Massachusetts lad more. A certain deck on the 'Paducah', which took him as far as Cairo, was devoted to cattle—black cattle. Eliphalet possessed a fortunate temperament. The deck was dark, and the smell of the wretches confined there was worse than it should have been. And the incessant weeping of some of the women was annoying, inasmuch as it drowned many of the profane communications of the overseer who was showing Eliphalet the sights. Then a fine-linened planter from down river had come in during the conversation, and paying no attention to the overseer's salute cursed them all into silence, and left.

Eliphalet had ambition, which is not a wholly undesirable quality. He began to wonder how it would feel to own a few of these valuable fellow-creatures. He reached out and touched lightly a young mulatto woman who sat beside him with an infant in her arms. The peculiar dumb expression on her face was lost on Eliphalet. The overseer had laughed coarsely.

"What, skeered on 'em?" said he. And seizing the girl by the cheek, gave it a cruel twinge that brought a cry out of her.

Eliphalet had reflected upon this incident after he had bid the overseer good-by at Cairo, and had seen that pitiful coffle piled aboard a steamer for New Orleans. And the result of his reflections was, that some day he would like to own slaves.

A dome of smoke like a mushroom hung over the city, visible from far down the river, motionless in the summer air. A long line of steamboats—white, patient animals—was tethered along the levee, and the Louisiana presently swung in her bow toward a gap in this line, where a mass of people was awaiting her arrival. Some invisible force lifted Eliphalet's eyes to the upper deck, where they rested, as if by appointment, on the trim figure of the young man in command of the Louisiana. He was very young for the captain of a large New Orleans packet. When his lips moved, something happened. Once he raised his voice, and a negro stevedore rushed frantically aft, as if he had received the end of a lightning-bolt. Admiration burst from the passengers, and one man cried out Captain Brent's age—it was thirty-two.

Eliphalet snapped his teeth together.