Stephen Vincent Benét wrote the short story The Devil and Daniel Webster. You may be wrong, but you would be surprised if the average 2019 university student has a clue of either man or the work of fiction. To set the stage, Webster was an American statesman when there was such a thing. He served as Secretary of State for three Presidents. Forty-six years after he died, Benet drew first breath in Bethlehem, Pa., attended military school and Yale University where he distinguished himself in literary pursuits. Before he died at 44, he won the Pulitzer Prize for John Brown’s Body and gave tribute to Webster in the short story fantasy that later became a play and then a film. In light of a dehumanized American culture, the erosion of morality and epidemic political corruption, Benet’s literary fantasy speaks to you, not as fiction, but as gut wrenching reality. You may know the story. A New Hampshire farmer sells his soul to The Devil (Mr. Scratch) to gain seven years of immense wealth. When Scratch comes to collect, Webster comes to his defense and makes a deal to defend him before Scratch’s jury of the “quick and the dead” — a deceased pack of American murderers, traitors, pirates and the like. If he lost the case, Webster would be doomed alongside his client. His summation echoes throughout history.
He began: “Gentlemen of the jury, it is my privilege to be addressing tonight a group of men I’ve long been acquainted with in song and story, but men I had never hoped to see.”
He paused.
They stare back at him, eyes fixed; and one Benedict Arnold slowly starts to raise his head. He continued:
“My worthy opponent, Mr. Scratch, has called you Americans all, and Mr. Scratch was right — you were Americans all. Oh, what a heritage you were born to share. Gentlemen of the jury, I envy you. For you were there at the birth of a mighty Union. It was given to you to hear those first cries of pain — and to behold the shining babe that was born of blood and tears. Tonight, you are called upon to judge a man named Jabez Stone. What is his case? He is accused of breach of contract. He made a deal to find a short cut in his life to get rich quickly — the same deal all of you once made.”
Webster paused here to speak directly to Arnold.
“You, Benedict Arnold … I speak to you first, because you’re better known than all your other colleagues here. What a different song yours could have been. A friend of Washington and LaFayette. A soldier, General Arnold, you fought so gallantly for the American cause,
till — what was the date? Oh, yes — in 1779, a date burned in your heart. The lure of gold made you betray that cause.
“And you, Simon Girty, now known to all as Renegade. A loathsome word — you also took that other way. You, Walter Butler — what would you give to have another chance to let the grasses grow in Cherry Valley without the stain of blood? You, Captain Kidd, and you, Governor Dale — I could go on and name you all, but there’s no need of that. Why stir the wounds? I know they pain enough.
“All of you were fooled like Jabez Stone — fooled and trapped in your desire to rebel against your fate. Gentlemen of the jury, it’s the eternal right of man to raise his fist against his fate, but every time he does he stands at crossroads. You took the wrong turn and so did Jabez Stone. But he found out in time. He is here tonight to save his soul. Gentlemen of the jury, I ask that you give Jabez Stone another chance to walk upon the earth, among the trees, the growing corn, the smell of grass in spring. What would you give for one more chance to see those things that you must all remember and often long to feel again? For you were all men once. Clean American air was in your lungs — you breathed it deep, for it was free and blew across an earth you loved. These are common things I speak of — small things, but they are good things. Yet without your soul they are nothing. Without your soul they sicken. Mr. Scratch told you that your soul is nothing and you believed him. It has cost you your freedom. Freedom is not just a big word — it is the bread and the morning and the risen sun. It was for freedom we came in boats and ships to these shores. It has been a long journey, a hard one, a bitter one. There is sadness in being a man, but it is a proud thing, too. Out of the suffering and the starvation, the wrong and the right, a new thing has come — a free man. When the whips of the oppressors are broken, and their names forgotten and destroyed, free men will be walking and talking under a free star. Yes, we have planted freedom here in this earth like wheat. We have said to the sky above us, ‘A man shall own his own soul.’ Now — here is this man — he is your brother. You are Americans all; you cannot take Scratch’s side — the side of the oppressor. Let Jabez Stone keep his soul — this soul which doesn’t belong to him alone, which belongs to his son — his family — his country. Gentlemen of the jury — don’t let this country go to The Devil! Free Jabez Stone! God save the United States and the men who have made her free.”
It is you who must decide: Was this trial about an individual — or a country? Thank you, Mr. Benet. Ed.
Mark 8:36
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?