The serfs, when standing for great ideas, would die rather than yield.  Napoleon I learned this at Eylau; Napoleon III learned it at Sebastopol; yet in daily life they were slavish beyond belief.  On a certain day, in the year 1855, the most embarrassed man in all Russia was doubtless our excellent American minister.  The serf coachman employed at wages was called up to receive his discharge for drunkenness.  Coming into the presence of a sound-hearted American democrat, who never had dreamed of one mortal kneeling to another, Ivan throws himself on his knees, presses his forehead to the minister’s feet, fawns like a tamed beast, and refuses to move until the minister relieves himself from this nightmare of servility by a full pardon.

Time after time we have entered the serf field and serf hut; have seen the simple round of serf toils and sports; have heard the simple chronicles of self joys and sorrows:  but whether his livery were filthy sheepskin or gold-laced caftan; whether he lay on carpets at the door of his master, or in filth on the floor of his cabin; whether he gave us cold, stupid stories of his wrongs, or flippant details of his joys; whether he blessed his master or cursed him—­we have wondered at the power which a serf system has to degrade and imbrute the image of God.

But astonishment was increased a thousand-fold at study of the reflex influence for evil upon the serf-owners themselves, upon the whole free community, upon the very soil of the whole country.  On all those broad plains of Russia, on the daily life of that serf-owning aristocracy, on the whole class which was neither of serfs nor serf-owners, the curse of God was written in letters so big and so black that all mankind might read them.  Farms were untilled, enterprise deadened, invention crippled, education neglected; life was of little value; labor was the badge of servility, laziness the very badge and passport of gentility.  Despite the most specious half-measures, despite all efforts to galvanize it, to coax life into it, to sting life into it, the nation remained stagnant.  Not one traveller who does not know that the evils brought on that land by the despotism of the autocrat were as nothing compared to that dark network of curses spread over it by a serf-owning aristocracy.  Into the conflict with this evil Alexander II entered manfully.  Having been two years upon the throne, having made a plan, having stirred some thought through certain authorized journals, he inspired the nobility in three of the northwestern provinces to memorialize him in regard to emancipation.

Straightway an answer was sent conveying the outlines of the Emperor’s plan.  The period of transition from serfage to freedom was set at twelve years; at the end of that time the serf was to be fully free and possessor of his cabin, with an adjoining piece of land.  The provincial nobles were convoked to fill out these outlines with details as to the working out by the serfs of a fair indemnity to their masters.  The whole world was stirred; but that province in which the Czar hoped most eagerly for a movement to meet him—­the province where beat the old Muscovite heart, Moscow—­was stirred least of all.  Every earnest throb seemed stifled there by that strong aristocracy.