Mr. March Character Analysis

And the blood that perfused the silted eddies of the boot-stirred river also formed a design that is not unlike those fine endpapers. Or-better-like that spill of carmine ink when the impatient hand of our little artist overturned the well upon our floorboards. But these lines, of course, I do not set down. I promised her that I would write something every day, and I find myself turning to this obligation when my mind is most troubled. For it is as if she were here with me for a moment, her calming hand resting lightly upon my shoulder. Yet I am thankful that she is not here, to see what I must see, to know what I am come to know. And with this thought I exculpate my censorship: I never promised I would write the truth.

That evening, Mr. Clement was full of his reading in Lavater, and from there we progressed to Samuel Morton’s book on human crania-a handsome new volume, to which I had been drawn by virtue of its elegant plates. Mr. Clement, in his generosity, had offered it as barter-a most unfavorable one for him. It was inevitable that we should move from there to the science of “Niggerology,” as Mr. Clement called it, and from there, by easy stages, to the matter of slavery. I thought to begin by praising the smooth management of the estate, and the relations of affection and trust I had observed between master and servant.

It was, perhaps, the beauty of her curved lips. Perhaps it was pity, or admiration for her dignity or her patience. Or perhaps just the extra glasses of claret. I stood, reached out a hand, and touched her cheek. And then I kissed her.

I was eighteen and I had never kissed a woman before. The taste of her mouth was like cool spring water. The sweetness of it made me dizzy, and I wondered if I would be able to keep my feet. I felt the softness of her, tongue in my mouth for a moment, then she raised her fingers, laid them lightly on my face, and gently pushed me away.

“It’s not wise,” she whispered. “Not for either of us.”

The whip fell, again, with an almost delicate precision, the second strip taken just one inch lower on the buttocks, in perfect parallel to the first. Prudence was howling and had buried her face in Annie’s skirt. Clement raised his hand then, and I felt my body go limp with relief at the end to this terrible proceeding.

“Turn the child,” he said. “She must watch the punishment.” The cook untangled her daughter’s fingers from her pinafore, placed a hand on her wet cheek, and turned her face around.

“Proceed,” said Clement. Strip by strip the lash carved into Grace’s shuddering flesh. My tears were falling by then, heavy drops, joining in the leaf dust with the blood that had begun to trickle from the table. My limbs were so weak that I could not even raise a hand to wipe the mucus that dripped from my nose.

To be sure, those events were several years behind me by the time we met. The guilt I felt, for having let myself be seduced by Clement’s wealth and deceived by his false nobility had eased, in time, from an acute pain to a dull ache. By then, I had little wish to recall the callow peddler who would turn over any dank stone in his quest for knowledge.

The scars stood, puckered and pale, against the smooth sheen of the uninjured skin above them. Twenty years, and there it was: the evidence of the great crime I had witnessed. That I had caused to be committed.

“The fancy-girl merchants don’t pay for spoiled goods, Mr. March.”

I moved toward her and pulled the fabric up to cover the obscene marks. As I did so, my fingertip brushed against the place. The scar was hard as rind. I dropped to my knees then, overcome with grief and pity. “I am so sorry,” I whispered. But as I tried to rise, she laid her hands on my shoulders and gently, firmly held me. Then she drew my head against her.

“I like you all right; I know you mean well, but the thing of it is, you’re too radical for these mill-town lads. I knew your views when my old friend Day recommended you to this service, and personally I have no love for slavery. But most of these boys aren’t down here fighting for the nig- for the slaves. You must see it, man. Be frank with yourself for once. Why, there’re about as many genuine abolitionists in Lincoln’s army as there are in Jeff Davis’s. When the boys in this unit listen to you preach emancipation, all they hear is that a pack of ragged baboons is going to be heading north to take their jobs away...”

I shall say, rather, that my decision to seek a ministry with the contraband came to me as an inspiration brought on by walking these streets in the steps of Captain Brown. I shall say, like the hymn, that his truth is marching on, and I feel called to march with it. And even as I write this, I know that between me and my beloved, truth recedes with every word I set down.

“[…] Colonel Croft and his lady wife had a slave’s lifetime in which to defray the expenses of illness, real or feigned. My lease here runs a single year, and I mean to make something at the end of it, in return for all the danger and discomfort I’ve undertaken. I don’t claim to be an evangel of abolition like you, Mr. March. I’m a businessman, simple as that. Yet we both have a role to play in the betterment of the Negro’s condition. I came here with more than an ordinary interest in the free labor enterprise. I believe that the production of cotton and sugar by free labor must be both possible and profitable ... for them as well as us. If we cannot prove our point, what future will these people have? A dark one, wouldn’t you say?”

If Marmee had been ardent in her abolitionism before the birth of her children, their coming into our lives set her on fire. I came upon her one day, nursing little Beth, with Jo curled up asleep, pressed against her lap, and Meg making an imaginary tea party at her feet. It was a delightful scene of maternal tranquillity, except that my wife’s shoulders shook and her face was wet with tears. I came up to her and gently inquired as to the source of her distress, thinking that the fatigue of the new mother and the death of her dear father perhaps had combined to oppress her spirit.

“No,” she sobbed, when I probed her. “I am thinking of the slave mother. How can I sit here, enjoying the comfort of my babes, when somewhere in this wicked land her child is being torn from her arms?”

Both children and adults alike seem hungry for instruction [...] It is hard to fathom how a people kept so long in the darkest ignorance can have such a keen desire for mastery of the written word. Some of them, it is true, have been so degraded by slavery that they do not know the usages of civilized life; these are hands innocent of pen or quill, having touched little else than the ax helve, the plow handle, and the cotton boll. Yet even these are by no means unintelligent. Many of them, it seems, have acquired the habit of veiling any brilliance of mind under a thick coverlet of blank idiocy. I can only speculate that life was easier for them so: a supposed simpleton threatens little, nor promises much. Mr. Canning calls them dull and lazy, but where he looks to find evidence for this, I see instead evidence of wit.

To do justice to so many it would be necessary to have more teachers. Frequently, I yearned for assistance. And when I did, I thought of Marmee, but more often, I must confess, of Grace. How it would inflame my pupils’ ambitions, I thought, to see one of their own so accomplished. But Grace was beyond my reach, shackled by her own high principles to a wretched old man who had begotten but in no way fathered her. So instead, I introduced my students to the autobiography of Frederick Douglass and the poems of Phillis Wheatley, of which I had a number by heart. I took delight in seeing their eyes open with amazement at the attainments of these two, the one a runaway slave, the other a barbarian-born African, kidnapped into bondage.

Something about the intense, rapid rhythm began to work inside me, making my heart seem to beat faster. I became excited, thrilled, so that I was on my feet and swaying rapidly without even the thought that I had meant to rise registering in my mind. My mind became hollow as a gourd, emptied of all thought. Somehow, I have no idea how, I found myself in the circle, shuffling, clapping, adding my voice to the other raised voices until my throat was raw. I have no idea how much time passed this way, but when I finally fell out of the dance, soaked in my own sweat, my muscles spent and trembling, I looked around for Canning. His stool was empty and he was nowhere to be seen.

Who is the brave man—he who feels no fear? If so, then bravery is but a polite term for a mind devoid of rationality and imagination. The brave man, the real hero, quakes with terror, sweats, feels his very bowels betray him, and in spite of this moves forward to do the act he dreads. And yet I do not think it heroic to march into fields of fire, whipped on one’s way only by fear of being called craven. Sometimes, true courage requires inaction; that one sit at home while war rages, if by doing so one satisfies the quiet voice of honorable conscience.

I had absolved Brown, long ago, for the loss of my fortune; I had schooled myself to look back on the episode without bitterness or blame. But I had advanced him money to free human beings, not to slaughter them. I knew I could not forgive, if my innocent ties to Brown implicated me in such killings, and proved the means of undoing the blessed bonds of my family.

I stayed hidden in the woodpile until they were gone. Then I crawled out and lay on the ground, working my fingers into the packed earth. I had cowered in my hole and let one man be tortured and another murdered. Why had I done that? Why had I let fear master me so completely? Because I wanted to live. But what good was living, if one had to live with such self-knowledge? What would my life be, after this night? How could I face my wife, my children, with this shame blazoned upon me like a brand?

My vision was blurry, and the charcoal marks on the blue-green fabric blurrier still. But etched on the filthy piece of turquoise satin I could make out the quavering letters:

capn March
yoonyin preechr
he cum from plase cal concrd
he a gud kin man

Aunt March was the only one of all of us who dared to utter the truth. When I got her note, wrapped around the money I was obliged to beg of her to pay for this journey, I read it and burned it […] I was angry at myself, for not having had the courage to stand aside from the crying up of this war and say, No. Not this way. You cannot right injustice by injustice. You must not defame God by preaching that he wills young men to kill one another. For what manner of God could possibly will what I see here?

She raked a hand through the fall of her hair as if considering it for the first time.

“I have my father’s hair, you see.”

“Then who...?”

She took up the ringlet and ran it between her long fingers. “Who can say? But my guess is that it is the hair of a child. See the ends? They are so fine. It appears like a lock one might retain from an infant’s first haircut.”

“Speak to him of them, remind him of their needs, his duty. That girl—woman—whoever she was—who saved him: she was right in what she struggled to set down about him: he is a good, kind man. But I don’t think he sees himself that way anymore. It will fall to you to convince him of it, if you want him to live.”

“You did not kill that child, a Confederate did. As for the captive Negroes, the war does go on without you, you know. There are others whose efforts might have something to do with liberating those people—all of them—your friends included. It is pride that makes you think like this, that makes you feel as though you are indispensable.”

“You have to stop wallowing in this notion that you are somehow at fault in all the ill things that have happened this past year. War is full of misfortune. Cannot you see? It is folly to let this self-flagellation shape your future.”

So this was how it was to be, now: I would do my best to live in the quick world, but the ghosts of the dead would be ever at hand.