a space on the outskirts of this camp, toward higher ground, and then dispersed, each to his own way.
I looked out and saw mud-streaked tents extending to the edges of the woods, and then, walking amongst them, saw conventioneers in humor and debate, and then in the larger tents, I saw orators of reform preaching their cause from makeshift platforms. The orators loved spectacle, and seemed to be vying with each other to bring followers to their cause. I waded through the throngs of listeners and paused before a white man in calico breeches and top-hat, who just at that moment was weeping uncontrollably into the sleeve of his coat. Through his tears, he told a tale, which held the audience rapt, of how rum and lager had stripped him of his home and family, until all he had were the clothes in which he was now dressed. And he was resolved, he said, now recovering himself, to remain garbed in this same costume until the curse of spirits was purged from the land.
I walked farther. I stopped before a crush of people and watched as two women, both in overalls, with shaven heads, declaimed on the rights of women to appear with all the freedoms of men, in all the same spheres. And as the women went on, their pitch and volume grew, until not even the gathered audience was spared, for the women now asserted that until we too resolved to take up the cause of suffrage, in this very assembly, we were partners in that vast conspiracy to pillage half the world.
And this pillage continued, I realized, moving farther to still another tent, where a white man stood beside a silent Indian in traditional dress. And the white man spoke of the great depredations he had seen, the iniquitous lengths these Georgians, Carolinians, and Virginians would commit themselves to, in the name of land. And by then, I well knew what would be done upon that land, how the sin of theft would be multiplied by the sin of bondage.
Farther along I went, until I caught sight of a line of children who stood behind a man raging against the factories of this country. The children had been sold into drudgery by parents who could no longer afford them, until they were saved by the beneficence of the society the man represented. Solely through these efforts of charity, the children would be bound to school and rescued from the evils of capital. And farther still, I found that this argument was cousin to another made from a trade unionist, who insisted that the titles of all factories should be stripped from their luxuriating owners and given to those who toiled in them.
And still farther was another related argument made that day, that the factory be rejected in total, that society be condemned a dead letter, and that men and women organize themselves in new communities where all worked together and owned everything in common. And even this was not the pinnacle of the Convention’s radicalism, for at the farthest edges of camp, I found a spinster who insisted that I and everyone rebuff even the bonds of marriage, which was itself as a kind of property, a kind of slavery, and ally myself with the doctrine of “free love.”
It was late morning now. The sun beat down out of the cloudless August sky. I wiped my brow with my jacket sleeve, and sat for a moment on a tree stump away from the fray of conventioneers and tents. It was all so much—an entire university out on that green. New ways of being, new ideas of liberation, now intruded upon me. Only a year ago, I would have rejected them all. But I had seen so much now, so much beyond even all that I had beheld in my father’s books. Where did it end? I could not tell, and this fact both pained me and filled me with joy.
When I looked up, I saw a woman just older than me, standing at the edge of the camp area from where I had just emerged, regarding me closely. When our eyes met, she smiled and approached directly. She had a delicate light brown face, framed by thick black hair that flowed down her cheeks and then to her shoulders.
I stood out of respect and her smile now disappeared. She surveyed me from head to foot, as though trying to be sure of something, and then