Challenging Times Need a Book Club Up to the Challenge discussion

"Elias had never believed in a sane God and so had never questioned a world where colored people could be the owners of slaves, and if at that moment...he sprouted wings, he would not have questioned that either."

--Elias one of 33 slaves owned by former slave Henry August Townsend

"The South was home, and not all the hell some in the North wanted to make it."

--Sheriff Skiffington

Despite vowing never to own a slave, Skiffington had no trouble doing his job to keep the institution of slavery going, an institution even God himself had sanctioned throughout the Bible.

"[Sheriff] Patterson liked what little authority he had and was concerned that anything else would be a usurper."

--Sheriff Gilly Patterson's thoughts after he and Sheriff John Skiffington are challenged by wealthy plantation owner, William Robbins, regarding their "vigilance" as it pertained to dealing with the perceived, yet unconfirmed, threat of abolitionists .

Here we go: this goes along with what Elizabeth mentioned in another thread regarding the precarious position of white citzenry lower on the social economic ladder.

"talking about how he would be a master different from any other, the kind of shepherd master God had intended. He had been vague, talking of good food for his slaves, no whippings, short and happy days in the fields. A master looking down on them all like God on his throne looked down on him." Caldonia remembering Henry.

Fern said gently to Calvin, “The hitter can never be the judge. Only the receiver of the blow can tell you how hard it was, whether it would kill a man or make a baby just yawn.”