Queen by Alex Haley Page A

resolutely
    opposed to any expansion of the original thirteen states, believing the
    result would be unwieldy.
        "What they really mean is that their own power and influence would be
        reduced," John said.
        Many in the South, the slaveholding states, wanted to break away and form
        their own country, a slave country, or to extend the number of slave
        states so that their own influence would be increased.
        Virginia was the glue that had kept the country together. Although it was
        a slaveholding state, it was balanced between the two major factions,
        North and South, slave and free, and it had produced giant men and giant
        minds, who had a dream of America and the ruthless will to make that
        dream a reality.
        "I don't know how long it can last as it is," John said. "But it will
        survive in some form or another. America is inevitable."
        The issue of slavery confused James most of all. The few blacks in
        Philadelphia were free, but were largely disparaged and despised by the
        whites. Jungle bunnies, they were called, who were lucky to be allowed
        the crumbs from the white man's table. Yet they were not enslaved. Again,
        John provided clarification.
        "It is New England again. The great argument of the federation was that
        the Puritans and Calvinists and Quakers would not tolerate slavery, and
        the Southern states would not abolish it. A compromise was reached, but,
        like all compromises, it is hardly satisfactory, because it leaves the
        issue unresolved."
        The compromise was that the Northern states would be free states and the
        Southern states slave states, but neither side was happy with the status
        quo. The Southerner wanted new, slaveholding territories admitted to the
        Union, thus increasing the power of the South, and the North as strongly
        resisted the expansion of the Union under those terms.
        None of this helped James's confusion. He did not know what he thought
        of slavery because he had not yet encountered it. He knew of free blacks
        in Philadelphia who were doing
    62 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
     
    extremely well. One, a sailmaker called Fortan, was reputed to earn over one
    hundred thousand dollars a year. At the other end of the scale, Mrs.
    Bankston's blacks were hardly literate.
        "They were not meant to read or write," Mrs. Bankston sniffed. "They are
        put here to serve us, to atone for the sins of their ancestor, Ham, who
        mocked his father, Noah. God cursed them for it. That is why they are
        black."
        Certainly, the black staff served James well, and he heard that during a
        recent outbreak of yellow fever, when many whites had fled the city, the
        blacks had stayed, and volunteered to work in the hospitals.
        He felt inadequate to argue with Mrs. Bankston because she claimed the
        Bible as her authority. James had only a superficial acquaintance with the
        Good Book. So he shrugged his shoulders on the matter of niggers and
        slavery, because it did not directly concern him, and went about his
        business.
     
    In the first flush of his flirtation with Philadelphia, he had abandoned his
    intention to go west, to find some idyllic spot and build a simple country
    life for himself, but his growing confusion at the contradictions of the
    city rekindled his earlier dream.
        He had thought America to be a classless society, but quickly discovered he
        was wrong. If there was no ruling class as such, there was certainly a form
        of aristocracy, with wealth as its bloodline, and its members could be at
        least as arrogant as their more illustrious counterparts in Europe.
        John was a citizen of some standing, and invited to many fine houses. He
        took his brother with