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well
favored,” and quietly departed.
    Last of all was the mousy woman, the one who had been so affected
by what Thomas said. She clasped his hand in both of hers, her eyes still
reddened with weeping.
    “Oh, sir! Your words have wrung my heart! I had not known
there was such goodness in men—or such evil! I am . . . I am
writing a book, you see, on the sufferings of the Negro slaves. John Jewett of
the National Era has expressed
interest in publishing it in serial form. Now I see I must enlarge my story to
include those poor souls who inhabit the automata. I only hope I can be as
persuasive as you have been.”
    Thomas extracted his hand as gently as he could. She was so
earnest, still quivering with the intensity of her fervor. Such zeal might
incite revolutions, start wars, or bring a nation to its knees.
    “Would you . . . I would like to correspond
with you,” she said, “to gain more particulars about this automaton in order to
better depict the plight of its kind. I mean, of his kind.”
    Perhaps there might be hope for reason and tolerance, for
fellowship and the “Spirit that delights to do no evil.”
    Thomas gave the woman his address and received in exchange a
lady’s fine calling card. After she left, he took the card out of his pocket
and studied it.
    Mrs. Harriet
Beecher Stowe
    Cincinnati,
Ohio.
    She’d come a long way to hear him. He did not doubt she
would go even further.
    Return to Table of Contents

Until We Are All Free
    Nancy Jane Moore
    New Year’s Day had been unusually warm, but several days
into 1863 a cold wind blew in from the northeast. All day long both slave and
free on the Calvert tobacco plantation along the Patuxent River found excuses
to drop by the workshop where Jasmine was welding metal plates together to form
shells for the automatons popularly called metalmen. Though the fire powering
the generator for her welding torch was the primary attraction, most took the opportunity
to share a bit of gossip.
    Charles Calvert, owner of the plantation and of Jasmine,
wanted as many metalmen as possible in time for spring planting, so Jasmine
didn’t take a break from her work for most of the visitors, simply offering a
smile and pretending she could hear over the roar of her torch. But when Benjamin
stopped in, he motioned her to turn it off.
    “Gonna be a meetin’ tonight,” he told her. “Davy’s been reading
up on Mr. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and he’s gonna tell us what it
means.”
    “What time?”
    “’Bout midnight. Gotta wait until the white folks is asleep,
so everybody can come. Even your mama.”
    Jasmine’s mama, Olivia, was lady’s maid to Calvert’s wife. The
plantation had come from the wife’s family; Calvert had started out with next
to nothing and married into money, though he liked to pretend he was descended
from the Calverts who founded Maryland.
    “I’ll be there, Mr. Benjamin. And I’ll let folks know when
they come by here.”
    “Good girl.”
    Jasmine had left girlhood behind her some time ago but
Benjamin was old enough to be her grandfather. She’d always be a girl to him.
    She turned the torch off again when Calvert himself dropped
by. “I just wanted to see how much progress you have made.”
    “You’ll have twenty-five more metalmen for spring planting,
sir.” Jasmine showed him the ten finished housings. “The inner workings take
longer to make than the shells, but I got a good start on them before Christmas.”
    “Excellent, excellent,” he said. “You do a damn site better
work than that Scotsman ever did. Beats me how you were able to pick up so much
from him that you could outshine him, but you’ve more than proved yourself.”
    “Thank you, sir.” Jasmine wondered what he wanted. Charles Calvert
never threw compliments around.
    “Jasmine, I’ve got a proposition for you. If you can make me
a hundred more of these metalmen by September, I’ll give you your freedom
papers.”
    Freedom papers. She forced