 | The Leopard's Spots |  |
Book One—Legree's Regime
2.
CHAPTER II
A LIGHT SHINING IN DARKNESS
In the rear of Mrs. Gaston's place, there stood in the midst of an orchard a log house of two rooms, with hallway between them. There was a mud-thatched wooden chimney at each end, and from the back of the hallway a kitchen extension of the same material with another mud chimney. The house stood in the middle of a ten acre lot, and a woman was busy in the garden with a little girl, planting seed.
"Hurry up Annie, less finish this in time to fix up a fine dinner er greens and turnips an 'taters an a chicken. Yer Pappy 'll get home to-day sure. Colonel Gaston's Nelse come last night. Yer Pappy was in the Colonel's regiment an' Nelse said he passed him on the road comin' with two one-legged soldiers. He ain't got but one leg, he says. But, Lord, if there's a piece of him left we'll praise God an' be thankful for what we've got."
"Maw, how did he look? I mos' forgot—'s been so long sence I seed him?" asked the child.
"Look! Honey! He was the handsomest man in Campbell county! He had a tall fine figure, brown curly beard, and the sweetest mouth that was always smilin' at me, an' his eyes twinklin' over somethin' funny he'd seed or thought about. When he was young ev'ry gal around here was crazy about him. I got him all right, an' he got me too. Oh me! I can't help but cry, to think he's been gone so long. But he's comin' to-day! I jes feel it in my bones."
"Look a yonder, Maw, what a skeer-crow ridin' er ole hoss!" cried the girl, looking suddenly toward the road.
"Glory to God! It's Tom!" she shouted, snatching her old faded sun-bonnet off her head and fairly flying across the field to the gate, her cheeks aflame, her blond hair tumbling over her shoulders, her eyes wet with tears.
Tom was entering the gate of his modest home in as fine style as possible, seated proudly on a stack of bones that had once been a horse, an old piece of wool on his head that once had been a hat, and a wooden peg fitted into a stump where once was a leg. His face was pale and stained with the red dust of the hill roads, and his beard, now iron grey, and his ragged buttonless uniform were covered with dirt. He was truly a sight to scare crows, if not of interest to buzzards. But to the woman whose swift feet were hurrying to his side, and whose lips were muttering half articulate cries of love, he was the knightliest figure that ever rode in the lists before the assembled beauty of the world.
"Oh! Tom, Tom, Tom, my ole man! You've come at last!" she sobbed as she threw her arms around his neck, drew him from the horse and fairly smothered him with kisses.
"Look out, ole woman, you'll break my new leg! cried Tom when he could get breath.
"I don't care,—I'll get you another one," she laughed through her tears.
"Look out there again you're smashing my game shoulder. Got er Minie hall in that one."
"Well your mouth's all right I see," cried the delighted woman, as she kissed and kissed him.
"Say, Annie, don't be so greedy, give me a chance at my young one." Tom's eyes were devouring the excited girl who had drawn nearer.
"Come and kiss your Pappy and tell him how glad
He stumbled and fell. In a moment the strong arms of his wife were about him and she was helping him into the house.
She laid him tenderly on the bed, petted him and cried over him. "My poor old man, he's all shot and cut to pieces. You're so weak, Tom—I can't believe it. You were so strong. But we'll take care of you. Don't you worry. You just sleep a week and then rest all summer and watch us work the garden for you!"
He lay still for a few moments with a smile playing around his lips.
"Lord, ole woman, you don't know how nice it is to be petted like that, to hear a woman's voice, feel her breath on your face and the touch of her hand, warm and soft, after four years sleeping on dirt and living with men and mules, and fightin' and runnin' and diggin' trenches like rats and moles, killin' men, buryin' the dead like carrion, holdin' men while doctors sawed their legs off, till your turn came to be held and sawed! You can't believe it, but this is the first feather bed I've touched in four years.
"Well, well!—Bless God it's over now," she cried. "S'long as I've got two strong arms to slave for you—as long as there's a piece of you left big enough to hold on to—I'll work for you," and again she bent low over his pale face, and crooned over him as she had so often done over his baby in those four lonely years of war and poverty.
Suddenly Tom pushed her aside and sprang up in bed.
"Geemimy, Annie, I forgot my pardners—there's two more peg-legs out at the gate by this time waiting for us to get through huggin' and carryin' on before they come in. Run, fetch 'em in quick!"
Tom struggled to his feet and met them at the door.
"Come right into my palace, boys, I've seen some fine places in my time, but this is the handsomest one I ever set eyes on. Now, Annie, put the big pot in the little one and don't stand back for expenses. Let's have a dinner these fellers 'll never forget."
It was a feast they never forgot. Tom's wife had raised a brood of early chickens, and managed to keep them from being stolen. She killed four of them and cooked them as only a Southern woman knows how. She had sweet potatoes carefully saved in the mound against the kitchen chimney. There were turnips and greens and radishes, young onions and lettuce and hot corn dodgers fit for a king; and in the centre of the table she deftly fixed a pot of wild flowers little Annie had gathered. She did not tell them that it was the last peck of potatoes and the last pound of meal. This belonged to the morrow. To-day they would live.
They laughed and joked over this splendid banquet, and told stories of days and nights of hunger and exhaustion, when they had filled their empty stomachs with dreams of home.
"Miss Camp, you've got the best husband in seven states, did you know that? "asked one of the soldiers, a mere boy.
"Of course she'll agree to that, sonny," laughed Tom.
"Well it's so. If it hadn't been for him, M'am, we'd a been peggin' along somewhere way up in Virginny 'stead o' bein' so close to home. You see he let us ride his hoss a mile and then he'd ride a mile. We took it turn about, and here we are."
"Tom, how in this world did you get that horse?" asked his wife.
"Honey, I got him on my good looks," said he with a wink. "You see I was a settin' out there in the sun the
"Way down in ole No'th Caliny," I says, "at Hambright, not far from King's Mountain."
"How are you going to get home?" says he.
"God knows, I don't, General. I got a wife and baby down there I ain't seed fer nigh four years, and I want to see 'em so bad I can taste 'em. I was lookin' the other way when I said that, fer I was purty well played out, and feelin' weak and watery about the eyes, an' I didn't want no Yankee General to see water in my eyes."
"He called a feller to him and sorter snapped out to him, "Go bring the best horse you can spare for this man and give it to him."
"Then he turns to me and seed I was all choked up and couldn't say nothin' and says:
"I'm General Grant. Give my love to your folks when you get home. I've known what it was to be a poor white man down South myself once for awhile."
"God bless you, General. I thanks you from the bottom of my heart," I says as quick as I could find my tongue, "if it had to be surrender I'm glad it was to such a man as you.
"He never said another word, but just walked slow along smoking a big cigar. So ole woman, you know the reason I named that hoss, 'General Grant.' It may be I have seen finer hosses than that one, but I couldn't recollect anything about 'em on the road home."
Dinner over, Tom's comrades rose and looked wistfully down the dusty road leading southward.
"Well, Tom, ole man, we gotter be er movin'," said the
"All right, boys, you'll find yer train standin' on the side o' the track eatin' grass. Jes climb up, pull the lever and let her go."
The men's faces brightened, their lips twitched. They looked at Tom, and then at the old horse. They looked down the long dusty road stretching over hill and valley, hundreds of miles south, and then at Tom's wife and child, whispered to one another a moment, and the elder said:
"No, pardner, you've been awful good to us, but we'll get along somehow—we can't take yer hoss. It's all yer got now ter make a livin' on yer place."
"All I got?" shouted Tom, "man alive, ain't you seed my ole woman, as fat and jolly and han'some as when I married her 'leven years ago? Didn't you hear her cryin' an' shoutin' like she's crazy when I got home? Didn't you see my little gal with eyes jes like her daddy's? Don't you see my cabin standin' as purty as a ripe peach in the middle of the orchard when hundreds of fine houses are lyin' in ashes? Ain't I got ten acres of land? Ain't I got God Almighty above me and all around me, the same God that watched over me on the battlefields? All I got? That old stack o' bones that looks like er hoss? Well I reckon not!"
"Pardner, it ain't right," grumbled the soldier, with more of cheerful thanks than protest in his voice.
"Oh! Get off you fools," said Tom good-naturedly, "ain't it my hoss? Can't I do what I please with him?"
So with hearty hand-shakes they parted, the two astride the old horse's back. One had lost his right leg, the other, his left, and this gave them a good leg on each side to hold the cargo straight.
"Take keer yerself, Tom!" they both cried in the same breath as they moved away.
"Take keer yerselves, boys. I'm all right!" answered Tom, as he stumped his way back to the home. "It's all right, it's all right," he muttered to himself. "He'd a come in handy, but I'd a never slept thinkin' o' them peggin' along them rough roads."
Before reaching the house he sat down on a wooden bench beneath a tree to rest. It was the first week in May and the leaves were not yet grown. The sun was pouring his hot rays down into the moist earth, and the heat began to feel like summer. As he drank in the beauty and glory of the spring his soul was melted with joy. The fruit trees were laden with the promise of the treasures of the summer and autumn, a cat-bird was singing softly to his mate in the tree over his head, and a mockingbird seated in the topmost branch of an elm near his cabin home was leading the oratorio of feathered songsters. The wild plum and blackberry briars were in full bloom in the fence corners, and the sweet odour filled the air. He heard his wife singing in the house.
"It's a fine old world after all!" he exclaimed leaning back and half closing his eyes, while a sense of ineffable peace filled his soul. "Peace at last! Thank God! May I never see a gun or a sword, or hear a drum or a fife's scream on this earth again!"
A hound came close wagging his tail and whining for a word of love and recognition.
"Well, Bob, old boy, you're the only one left. You'll have to chase cotton-tails by yourself now."
Bob's eyes watered and he licked his master's hand apparently understanding every word he said.
Breaking from his master's hands the dog ran toward the gate barking, and Tom rose in haste as he recognised
Grasping him heartily by the hand the Preacher said,
"Tom, you don't know how it warms my soul to look into your face again. When you left, I felt like a man who had lost one hand. I've found it to-day. You're the same stalwart Christian full of joy and love. Some men's religion didn't stand the wear and tear of war. You've come out with your soul like gold tried in the fire. Colonel Gaston wrote me you were the finest soldier in the regiment, and that you were the only Chaplain he had seen that he could consult for his own soul's cheer. That's the kind of a deacon to send to the front! I'm proud of you, and you're still at your old tricks. I met two one-legged soldiers down the road riding your horse away as though you had a stable full at your command. You needn't apologise or explain, they told me all about it."
"Preacher, it's good to have the Lord's messenger speak words like them. I can't tell you how glad I am to be home again and shake your hand. I tell you it was a comfort to me when I lay awake at night an them battlefields, a wonderin' what had become of my ole woman and the baby, to recollect that you were here, and how often I'd heard you tell us how the Lord tempered the wind to the shorn lamb. Annie's been telling me who watched out for her them dark days when there was nothin' to eat. I reckon you and your wife knows the way to this house about as well as you do to the church."
Tom had pulled the Preacher down on the seat beside him while he said this.
"The dark days have only begun, Tom. I've come to see you to have you cheer me up. Somehow you always seemed to me to be closer to God than any man in the church. You will need all your faith now. It seems
"Preacher, the Lord is looking down here to-day and sees all this as plain as you and me. As long as He is in the sky everything will come all right on the earth."
"How's your pantry?" asked the Preacher.
"Don't know. 'Man shall not live by bread alone,' you know. When I hear these birds in the trees an' see this old dog waggin' his tail at me, and smell the breath of them flowers, and it all comes over me that I'm done killin' men, and I'm at home, with a bed to sleep on, a roof over my head, a woman to pet me and tell me I'm great and handsome, I don't feel like I'll ever need anything more to eat! I believe I could live a whole mouth here without eatin' a bite."
"Good. You come to the prayer meeting to-night and say a few things like that, and the folks will believe they have been eating three square meals every day."
"I'll be there. I ain't asked Annie what she's got, but I know she's got greens and turnips, onions and collards, and strawberries in the garden. Irish taters 'll be big enough to eat in three weeks, and sweets comin' right on. We've got a few chickens. The blackberries and plums and peaches and apples are all on the road. Ah! Preacher, it's my soul that's been starved away from my wife and child!"
"You don't know how much I need help sometimes Tom. I am always giving, giving myself in sympathy and help to others, I'm famished now and then. I feel faint and worn out. You seem to fill me again with life."
"I'm glad to hear you say that, Preacher. I get down-hearted
"Well, that's partly what brought me here this morning. I want you to help me look after Mrs. Gaston and her little boy. She is prostrated over the death of the Colonel and is hanging between life and death. She is in a delirious condition all the time and must be watched day and night. I want you to watch the first half of the night with Nelse, and Eve and Mary will watch the last half."
"Of course, I'll do anything in the world I can for my Colonel's widder. He was the bravest man that ever led a regiment, and he was a father to us boys. I'll be there. But I won't set up with that nigger. He can go to bed."
"Tom, it's a funny thing to me that as good a Christian as you are should hate a nigger so. He's a human being. It's not right."
"He may be human, Preacher, I don't know. To tell you the truth, I have my doubts. Anyhow, I can't help it. God knows I hate the sight of 'em like I do a rattlesnake. That nigger Nelse, they say is a good one. He was faithful to the Colonel, I know, but I couldn't bear him no more than any of the rest of 'em. I always hated a nigger since I was knee high. My daddy and my mammy hated 'em before me. Somehow, we always felt like they was crowdin' us to death on them big plantations, and the little ones too. And then I had to leave my wife and baby and fight four years, all on account of their stinkin' hides, that never done nothin' for me except make it harder to live. Every time I'd go into battle and hear them Minie balls begin to sing over us, it seemed to me I could see their black ape faces grinnin'
"I'll fix it with Nelse, then. You take the first part of the night 'till twelve clock. I'll go down with you from the church to-night," said the Preacber, as he shook Tom's hand and took his leave.
6.
CHAPTER VI
THE PREACHER AND THE WOMAN OF BOSTON
The next day the Preacher had a call from Miss Susan Walker of Boston, whose liberality had built the new Negro school house and whose life and fortune was devoted to the education and elevation of the Negro race. She had been in the village often within the year, running up from Independence where she was building and endowing a magnificent classical college for negroes. He had often heard of her, but as she stopped with negroes when on her visits he had never met her. He was especially interested in her after hearing incidentally that she was a member of a Baptist church in Boston.
On entering the parlour the Preacher greeted his visitor with the deference the typical Southern man instinctively pays to woman.
"I am pleased to meet you, Madam," he said with a graceful bow and kindly smile, as he led her to the most comfortable seat he could find.
She looked him squarely in the face for a moment as though surprised and smilingly replied,
"I believe you Southern men are all alike, woman flatterers. You have a way of making every woman believe you think her a queen. It pleases me, I can't help confessing it, though I sometimes despise myself for it. But I am not going to give you an opportunity to feed my vanity this morning. I've come for a plain face to
A cloud overshadowed the Preacher's face as he seated himself. He said nothing for a moment, looking curiously and thoughtfully at his visitor.
He seemed to be studying her character and to be puzzled by the problem. She was a woman of prepossessing appearance, well past thirty-five, with streaks of grey appearing in her smoothly brushed black hair. She was dressed plainly in rich brown material cut in tailor fashion, and her heavy hair was drawn straight up pompadour style from her forehead with apparent carelessness and yet in a way that heightened the impression of strength and beauty in her face. Her nose was the one feature that gave warning of trouble in an encounter. She was plump in figure, almost stout, and her nose seemed too small for the breadth of her face. It was broad enough, but too short, and was pug tipped slightly at the end. She fell just a little short of being handsome and this nose was responsible for the failure. It gave to her face when agitated, in spite of evident culture and refinement, the expression of a feminine bull dog.
Her eyes were flashing now, and her nostrils opened a little wider and began to push the tip of her nose upward. At last she snapped out suddenly,
"Well which is it, friend or foe? What do you honestly think of my work?"
"Pardon me, Miss Walker, I am not accustomed to speak rudely to a lady. If I am honest, I don't know where to begin."
"Bah! Lay aside your Don Quixote Southern chivalry this morning and talk to me in plain English. It doesn't matter whether I am a woman or a man. I am an idea,
"To be perfectly frank, I will not. You ask me for plain English. I will give it to you. Your presence in this village as a missionary to the heathen is an insult to our intelligence and Christian manhood. You come at this late day a missionary among the heathen, the heathen whose heart and brain created this Republic with civil and religious liberty for its foundations, a missionary among the heathen who gave the world Washington, whose giant personality three times saved the cause of American Liberty from ruin when his army had melted away. You are a missionary among the children of Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, Jackson, Clay and Calhoun! Madam, I have baptised into the fellowship of the church of Christ in this county more negroes than you ever saw in all your life before you left Boston.
"At the close of the war there were thousands of negro members of white Baptist churches in the state. Your mission is not to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. Your mission is to teach crack-brained theories of social and political equality to four millions of ignorant negroes, some of whom are but fifty years removed from the savagery of African jungles. Your work is to separate and alienate the negroes from their former masters who can be their only real friends and guardians. Your work is to sow the dragon's teeth of an impossible social order that will bring forth its harvest of blood for our children."
He paused a moment, and, suddenly facing her continued, "I should like to help the cause you have at heart and the most effective service I could render it now would
"Indeed! I suppose then it is still a crime in the South to teach the Negro?" she asked this in little gasps of fury, her eyes flashing defiance and her two rows of white teeth uncovering by the rising of her pugnacious nose.
"For you, yes. It is always a crime to teach a lie."
"Thank you. Your frankness is all one could wish!"
"Pardon my apparent rudeness. You not only invited, you demanded it. While about it, let me make a clean breast of it. I do you personally the honour to acknowledge that you are honest and in dead earnest, and that you mean well. You are simply a fanatic."
"Allow me again to thank you for your candour!"
"Don't mention it, Madam. You will be canonised in due time. In the meantime let us understand one another. Our lives are now very far apart, though we read the same Bible, worship the same God and hold the same great faith. In the settlement of this Negro question you as an insolent interloper. You're worse, you are a wilful spoiled child of rich and powerful parents playing with matches in a powder mill. I not only will not help you, I would, If I had the power seize you, and return you to a place of safety. But I cannot oppose you. You are protected in your play by a million bayonets and back of these bayonets are banked the fires of passion in the North ready to burst into flame in a moment. The only thing I can do is to ignore your existence. You understand my position."
"Certainly, Doctor," she replied good naturedly.
She had recovered from the rush of her anger now and was herself again. A curious smile played round her lips as she quietly added:
"I must really thank you for your candour. You have
"Then, Madam, it is quite clear we agree upon establishing and maintaining a great mutual ignorance. Let us hope, paradoxical as it may seem, that it may be for the enlightenment of future generations!"
She arose to go, smiling at his last speech.
"Before we part, perhaps never to meet again, let me ask you one question," said the Preacher still looking thoughtfully at her.
"Certainly, as many as you like."
"Why is it that you good people of the North are spending your millions here now to help only the negroes who feel least of all the sufferings of this war? The poor white people of the South are your own flesh and blood. These Scotch Covenanters, are of the same Puritan stock, these German, Huguenot and English people are all your kinsmen, who stood at the stake with your fathers in the old world. They are, many of them, homeless, without clothes, sick and hungry and broken hearted. But one in ten of them ever owned a slave. They had to fight this war because your armies invaded their soil. But for their sorrows, sufferings and burdens you have no ear to hear and no heart to pity. This is a strange thing to me."
"The white people of the South can take care of themselves. If they suffer, it is God's just punishment for their sins in owning slaves and fighting against the flag. Do I make myself clear?" she snapped.
"Perfectly, I haven't another word to say."
"My heart yearns for the poor dear black people who have suffered so many years in slavery and have been denied the rights of human beings. I am not only going to establish schools and colleges for them here, but I am conducting an experiment of thrilling interest to me which will prove that their intellectual, moral, and social capacity is equal to any white man's."
"Is it so? "asked the Preacher.
"Yes, I am collecting from every section of the South the most promising specimens of negro boys and sending them to our great Northern Universities where they will be educated among men who treat them as equals, and I expect from the boys reared in this atmosphere, men of transcendent genius, whose brilliant achievements in science, art and letters will forever silence the tongues of slander against their race. The most interesting of these students I have at Harvard now is young George Harris. His mother is Eliza Harris, the history of whose escape over the ice of the Ohio River fleeing from slavery thrilled the world. This boy is a genius, and if he lives he will shake this nation."
"It may be, Miss Walker. There are more ways than one to shake a nation. And while I ignore your work, as a citizen and public man,—privately and personally, I shall watch this experiment with profound interest."
"I know it will succeed. I believe God made us of one blood," she said with enthusiasm.
"Is it true, Madam, that you once endowed a home for homeless cats before you became interested in the black people?" With a twinkle in his eye the Preacher softly asked this apparently irrelevant question.
"Yes, sir, I did,—I am proud of it. I love cats. There an over a thousand in the home now, and they are well cared for. Whose business is it?"
"I meant no offense by the question. I love cats too. But I wondered if you were collecting negroes only now, or, whether you were adding other specimens to your menagerie for experimental purposes."
She bit her lips, and in spite of her efforts to restrain her anger, tears sprang to her eyes as she turned toward the Preacher whose face now looked calmly down upon her with ill-concealed pride.
"Oh! the insolence of you Southern people toward those who dare to differ with you about the Negro!" she cried with rage.
"I confess it humbly as a Christian, it is true. My scorn for these maudlin ideas is so deep that words have no power to convey it. But come," said the Preacher in the kindliest tone. "Enough of this. I am pained to see tears in your eyes. Pardon my thoughtlessness. Let us forget now for a little while that you are an idea, and remember only that you are a charming Boston woman of the household of our own faith. Let me call Mrs. Durham, and have you know her and discuss with her the thousand and one things dear to all women's hearts."
"No, I thank you! I feel a little sore and bruised, and social amenities can have no meaning for those whose souls are on fire with such antagonistic ideas as yours and mine. If Mrs. Durham can give me any sympathy in my work Ill be delighted to see her, otherwise I must go."
The Preacher laughed aloud.
"Then let me beg of you, never meet Mrs. Durham. If you do, the war will break out again. I don't wish to figure in a case of assault and battery. Mrs. Durham was the owner of fifty slaves. She represents the bluest of the blue blood of the slave-holding aristocracy of the South. She has never surrendered and she never will. Wars, surrenders, constitutional amendments and such
"Then we will say good-bye," said Miss Walker, extending her small plump hand in friendly parting. "I accept your challenge which this interview implies. I will succeed if God lives," and she set her lips with a snap that spoke volumes.
"And I will watch you from afar with sorrow and fear and trembling," responded the Preacher.
11.
CHAPTER XI
SIMON LEGREE
In the death of Mr. Lincoln, a group of radical politicians, hitherto suppressed, saw their supreme opportunity to obtain control of the nation in the crisis of an approaching Presidential campaign.
Now they could fasten their schemes of proscription, confiscation, and revenge upon the South.
Mr. Lincoln had held these wolves at bay during his life by the power of his great personality. But the Lion was dead, and the Wolf, who had snarled and snapped at him in life, put on his skin and claimed the heritage of his power. The Wolf whispered his message of hate, and in the hour of partisan passion became the master of the nation.
Busy feet had been hurrying back and forth from the Southern states to Washington whispering in the Wolf's ear the stories of sure success, if only the plan of proscription, disfranchisement of whites, and enfranchisement of blacks were carried out.
This movement was inaugurated two years after the war, with every Southern state in profound peace, and in a life and death struggle with nature, to prevent famine. The new revolution destroyed the Union a second time, paralysed every industry in the South, and transformed ten peaceful states into roaring hells of anarchy. We have easily outlived the sorrows of the war. That was a surgery which healed the body. But the
The South was now rapidly gathering into two hostile armies under these influences, with race marks as uniforms—the Black against the White.
The Negro army was under the command of a triumvirate, the Carpet-bagger from the North, the native Scalawag and the Negro Demagogue.
Entirely distinct from either of these was the genuine Yankee soldier settler in the South after the war, who came because he loved its genial skies and kindly people.
Ultimately some of these Northern settlers were forced into politics by conditions around them, and they constituted the only conscience and brains visible in public life during the reign of terror which the "Reconstruction" régime inaugurated.
In the winter of 1866 the Union League at Hambright held a meeting of special importance. The attendance was large and enthusiastic.
Amos Hogg, the defeated candidate for Governor in the last election, now the President of the Federation of "Loyal Leagues," had sent a special ambassador to this meeting to receive reports and give instructions.
This ambassador was none other than the famous Simon Legree of Red River, who had migrated to North Carolina attracted by the first proclamation of the President, announcing his plan for readmitting the state to the Union. The rumours of his death proved a mistake. He had quit drink, and set his mind on greater vices.
In his face were the features of the distinguished ruffian whose cruelty to his slaves had made him unique in infamy in the annals of the South. He was now pre-eminently the type of the "truly loyal". At the first rumour of war he had sold his negroes and migrated nearer the border land, that he might the better avoid service in either army. He succeeded in doing this. The last two years of the war, however, the enlisting officers pressed him hard, until finally he hit on a brilliant scheme.
He shaved clean, and dressed as a German emigrant woman. He wore dresses for two years, did house work, milked the cows and cut wood for a good natured old German. He paid for his board, and passed for a sister, just from the old country.
When the war closed, he resumed male attire, became a violent Union man, and swore that he had been hounded and persecuted without mercy by the Secessionist rebels.
He was looking more at ease now than ever in his life. He wore a silk hat and a new suit of clothes made by a fashionable tailor in Raleigh. He was a little older looking than when he killed Uncle Tom on his farm some ten years before, but otherwise unchanged. He had the same short muscular body, round bullet head, light grey eyes and shaggy eyebrows, but his deep chestnut bristly hair had been trimmed by a barber. His coarse thick lips drooped at the corners of his mouth and emphasised the crook in his nose. His eyes, well set apart, as of old, were bold, commanding, and flashed with the cold light of glittering steel. His teeth that once were pointed like the fangs of a wolf had been filed by a dentist. But it required more than the file of a dentist to smooth out of that face the ferocity and cruelty that years of dissolute habits had fixed.
He was only forty-two years old, but the flabby flesh
It was a spectacle for gods and men, to see him harangue that Union League in the platitudes of loyalty to the Union, and to watch the crowd of negroes hang breathless on his every word as the inspired Gospel of God. The only notable change in him from the old days was in his speech. He had hired a man to teach him grammar and pronunciation. He had high ambitions for the future.
"Be of good cheer, beloved!" he said to the negroes. "A great day is coming for you. You are to rule this land. Your old masters are to dig in the fields and you are to sit under the shade and be gentlemen. Old Andy Johnson will be kicked out of the White House or hung, and the farms you've worked on so long will be divided among you. You can rent them to your old masters and live in ease the balance of your life."
"Glory to God!" shouted an old negro.
"I have just been to Washington for our great leader, Amos Hogg. I've seen Mr. Sumner, Mr. Stevens and Mr. Butler. I have shown them that we can carry any state in the South, if they will only give you the ballot and take it away from enough rebels. We have promised them the votes in the Presidential election, and they are going to give us what we want."
"Hallelujah! Amen! Yas Lawd!" The fervent exclamations came from every part of the room.
After the meeting the negroes pressed around Legree and shook his hand with eagerness—the same hand that was red with the blood of their race.
When the crowd had dispersed a meeting of the leaders was held.
Dave Haley, the ex-slave trader from Kentucky who bad dodged back and forth from the mountains of his
In the group was the full blooded negro, Tim Shelby. He had belonged to the Shelbys of Kentucky, but had escaped through Ohio into Canada before the war. He had returned home with great expectations of revolutions to follow in the wake of the victorious armies of the North. He had been disappointed in the programme of kindliness and mercy that immediately followed the fall of the Confederacy; but he had been busy day and night since the war in organising the negroes, in secretly furnishing them arms and wherever possible he had them grouped in military posts and regularly drilled. He was elated at the brilliant prospects which Legree's report from Washington opened.
"Glorious news you bring us, brother!" he exclaimed as he slapped Legree on the back.
"Yes, and it's straight."
"Did Mr. Stevens tell you so?
"He's the man that told me."
"Well, you can tie to him. He's the master now that rules the country," said Tim with enthusiasm.
"You bet he's runnin' it. He showed me his bill to confiscate the property of the rebels and give it to the truly loyal and the niggers. It's a hummer. You ought to have seen the old man's eyes flash fire when he pulled that bill out of his desk and read it to me."
"When will he pass it?"
"Two years, yet. He told me the fools up North were not quite ready for it; and that he had two other bills first, that would run the South crazy and so fire the North that he could pass anything he wanted and hang old Andy Johnson besides."
"Praise God," shouted Tim, as he threw his arms around Legree and hugged him.
Tim kept his kinky hair cut close, and when excited he had a way of wrinkling his scalp so as to lift his ears up and down like a mule. His lips were big and thick, and he combed assiduously a tiny mustache which he tried in vain to pull out in straight Napoleonic style.
He worked his scalp and ears vigourously as he exclaimed, "Tell us the whole plan, brother!"
"The plan's simple," said Legree. "Mr. Stevens is going to give the nigger the ballot, and take it from enough white men to give the niggers a majority. Then he will kick old Andy Johnson out of the White House, put the gag on the Supreme Court so the South can't appeal, pan his bill to confiscate the property of the rebels and give it to loyal men and the niggers, and run the rebels out."
"And the beauty of the plan is," said Tim with unction, "that they are going to allow the Negro to vote to give himself the ballot and not allow the white man to vote against it. That's what I call a dead sure thing." Tim drew himself up, a sardonic grin revealing his white teeth from ear to ear, and burst into an impassioned harangue to the excited group. He was endowed with native eloquence, and had graduated from a college in Canada under the private tutorship of its professors. He was well versed in English History. He could hold an audience of negroes spell bound, and his audacity commanded the attention of the boldest white man who heard him.
Legree, Perkins and Haley cheered his wild utterances and urged him to greater flights.
He paused as though about to stop when Legree, evidently surprised and delighted at his powers said, "Go on! Go on!"
THE HON. TIM SHELBY.
Portrait from life
[Description:
Portrait of Time Shelby.
]
"Yes, go on," shouted Perkins. "We are done with race and colour lines."
A dreamy look came to Tim's eyes as he continued,
"Our proud white aristocrats of the South are in a panic it seems. They fear the coming power of the Negro. They fear their Desdemonas may be fascinated again by an Othello! Well, Othello's day has come at last. If he has dreamed dreams in the past his tongue dared not speak, the day is fast coming when he will put these dreams into deeds, not words.
"The South has not paid the penalties of her crimes. The work of the conqueror has not yet been done in this land. Our work now is to bring the proud low and exalt the lowly. This is the first duty of the conqueror.
"The French Revolutionists established a tannery where they tanned the hides of dead aristocrats into leather with which they shod the common people. This was France in the eighteenth century with a thousand years of Christian culture.
"When the English army conquered Scotland they hunted and killed every fugitive to a man, tore from the homes of their fallen foes their wives, stripped them naked, and made them follow the army begging bread, the laughing stock and sport of every soldier and camp follower! This was England in the meridian of Anglo-Saxon intellectual glory, the England of Shakespeare who was writing Othello to please the warlike populace.
"I say to my people now in the language of the inspired Word, 'All things are yours!' I have been drilling and teaching them through the Union League, the young and the old. I have told the old men that they will be just as useful as the young. If they can't carry a musket they can apply the torch when the time comes. And they are ready now to answer the call of the Lord!"
They crowded around Tim and wrung his hand.
* * * * * *
Early in 1867, two years after the war, Thaddeus Stevens passed through Congress his famous bill destroying the governments of the Southern states, and dividing them into military districts, enfranchising the whole negro race, and disfranchising one-fourth of the whites. The army was sent back to the South to enforce these decrees at the point of the bayonet. The authority of the Supreme Court was destroyed by a supplementary act and the South denied the right of appeal. Mr. Stevens then introduced his bill to confiscate the property of the white people of the 'South. The negroes laid down their hoes and plows and began to gather in excited meetings. Crimes of violence increased daily. Not a night passed but that a burning barn or home wrote its message of anarchy on the black sky.
The negroes refused to sign any contracts to work, to pay rents, or vacate their houses on notice even from the Freedman's Bureau.
The negroes on General Worth's Plantation, not only refused to work, or move, but organised to prevent any white man from putting his foot on the land.
General Worth procured a special order from the headquarters of the Freedman's Bureau for the district located at Independence. When the officer appeared and attempted to serve this notice, the negroes mobbed him.
A company of troops were ordered to Hambright, and the notice served again by the Bureau official accompanied by the Captain of this company.
The negroes asked for time to hold a meeting and discuss the question. They held their meeting and gathered fully five hundred men from the neighbourhood, all armed with revolvers or muskets. They asked Legree and Tim Shelby to tell them what they should do. There was no
"Gentlemen, your duty is plain. Hold your land. It's yours. You've worked it for a lifetime. These officers here tell you that old Andy Johnson has pardoned General Worth and that you have no rights on the land without his contract. I tell you old Andy Johnson has no right to pardon a rebel, and that he will be hung before another year. Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and B. F. Butler are running this country. Mr. Stevens has never failed yet on anything he has set his hand. He has promised to give you the land. Stick to it. Shake your fist in old Andy Johnson's face and the face of this Bureau and tell them so."
"Dat we will!" shouted a negro woman, as Tim Shelby rose to speak.
"You have suffered," said Tim. "Now let the white man suffer. Times have changed. In the old days the white man said,
"John, come black my boots!"
"And the poor negro had to black his boots. I expect to see the day when I will say to a white man, "Black my boots!" And the white man will tip his hat and hurry to do what I tell him."
"Yes, Lawd! Glory to God! Hear dat now!"
"We will drive the white men out of this country. That is the purpose of our friends at Washington. If white men want to live in the South they can become our servants. If they don't like their job they can move to a more congenial climate. You have Congress on your side, backed by a million bayonets. There is no President. The Supreme Court is chained. In San Domingo no white man is allowed to vote, hold office, or hold a foot of land. We will make this mighty South a more glorious San Domingo."
A frenzied shout rent the air. Tim and Legree were carried on the shoulders of stalwart men in triumphant procession with five hundred crazy negroes yelling and screaming at their heels.
The officers made their escape in the confusion and beat a hasty retreat to town. They reported the situation to headquarters, and asked for instructions.
13.
CHAPTER XIII
DICK
When Charlie Gaston reached his home after a never-to-be-forgotten day in the woods with the Preacher, he found a ragged little dirt-smeared negro boy peeping through the fence into the woodyard.
"What you want?" cried Charlie.
"Nuttin!"
"What's your name?"
"Dick."
"Who's your father?"
"Haint got none. My mudder say she was tricked, en I'se de trick!" he chuckled and walled his eyes.
Charlie came close and looked him over. Dick giggled and showed the whites of his eyes.
"What made that streak on your neck?"
"Nigger done it wid er axe."
"What nigger?"
"Low life nigger name er Amos what stays roun' our house Sundays."
"What made him do it?"
"He low he wuz me daddy, en I sez he wuz er liar, en den he grab de axe en try ter chop me head off."
"Gracious, he 'most killed you!"
"Yassir, but de doctor sewed me head back, en hit grow'd."
"Goodness me!"
"Say!" grinned Dick.
"What?"
"I likes you."
"Do you?"
"Yassir, en I aint gwine home no mo'. I done run away, en I wants ter live wid you."
"Will you help me and Nelse work?"
"Dat I will. I can do mos' anything. You ax yer Ma fur me, en doan let dat nigger Nelse git holt er me."
Charlie's heart went out to the ragged little waif. He took him by the hand, led him into the yard, found his mother, and begged her to give him a place to sleep and keep him.
His mother tried to persuade him to make Dick go back to his own home. Nelse was loud in his objections to the new comer, and Aunt Eve looked at him as though she would throw him over the fence.
But Dick stuck doggedly to Charlie's heels.
"Mama dear, see, they tried to cut his head off with an axe," cried the boy, and he wheeled Dick around and showed the terrible scar across the back of his neck.
"I spec hits er pity day didn't cut hit clean off," muttered Nelse.
"Mama, you can't send him back to be killed!"
"Well darling, I'll see about it to-morrow."
"Come on Dick, I'll show you where to sleep!"
The next day Dick's mother was glad to get rid of him by binding him legally to Mrs. Gaston, and a lonely boy found a playmate and partner in work, he was never to forget.
16.
CHAPTER XVI
LEGREE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE
The new government was now in full swing and a saturnalia began. Amos Hogg was Governor, Simon Legree Speaker of the House, and the Hon. Tim Shelby leader of the majority on the floor of the House.
Raleigh, the quaint little City of Oaks, never saw such an assemblage of law-makers gather in the grey stone Capitol.
Ezra Perkins, who was a member of the Senate, was frugal in his habits and found lodgings at an unpretentious boarding house near the Capitol square.
The room was furnished with six iron cots on which were placed straw mattresses and six honourable members of the new Legislature occupied these. They were close enough together to allow a bottle of whiskey to be freely passed from member to member at any hour of the night. They thought the beds were arranged with this in view and were much pleased.
Ezra was the only man of the crowd who arrived in Raleigh with a valise or trunk. He had a carpet bag. The others simply had one shirt and a few odds and ends tied in red bandana handkerchiefs.
Three of them had walked all the way to Raleigh and kept in the woods from habit as deserters. The other two rode on the train and handed their tickets to the first stranger they saw on the platform of the car they boarded.
"What's this for?" said the stranger.
"Them's our tickets. Ain't you the door keeper?"
"No, but there ought to be one to every circus. You'll have me when you get to Raleigh."
The landlady, Mrs. Duke, apologised for the poor beds, when she showed them to their room. "I'm sorry, gentlemen, I can't give you softer beds."
"That's all right M'am! them's fine. Us fellows been sleeping in the woods and in straw stacks so long dodgin' ole Vance's officers, them white sheets is the finest thing we've seed in four years, er more."
They were humble and made no complaints. But at the end of the week they gathered around the Rev. Ezra Perkins for a grave consultation.
"When are we goin' ter draw?" said one.
"Air we ever goin' ter draw?" asked another with sorrow and doubt.
"What are we here fer ef we cain't draw?" pleaded another looking sadly at Ezra.
"Gentlemen,"answered Ezra, "it will be all right in a little while. The Treasurer is just cranky. We can draw our mileage Monday anyhow."
At daylight they took their places on the bank's steps, and at ten o'clock when the bank opened, the doors were besieged by a mob of members painfully anxious to draw before it might be too late.
Next morning there was a disturbance at the breakfast table. The morning paper had in blazing head lines an amount of one James "Mileage" who was a member of the Legislature front an adjoining county thirty-seven miles distant. He had sworn to a mileage record of one hundred and seven dollars.
"That's an unfortunate mistake, sir," said Perkins.
"Ten' ter yer own business?" answered James "Mileage."
"I call it er purty sharp trick," grinned his partner.
"I call it stealin'," sneered an honourable member, evidently envious.
And James "Mileage"was his name for all time, but "Mileage" shot a malicious look at the member who had called him a thief.
The next morning the paper of the Opposition had another biographical sketch on the front page.
"I see your name in the paper this morning, Mr. Scoggins?" remarked Mrs. Duke, looking pleasantly at the member who had spoken so rudely to James "Mileage" the day before.
"Well I reckon I'll make my mark down here before it's over," chuckled Scoggins with pride. "What do they say about me, M'am?"
"They say you stole a lot of hogs!" tittered the landlady.
Mr. Scoggins turned red.
"Oho, is there another thief in this hon'able body?" sneered James "Mileage."
"That's all a lie, M'am, 'bout them hogs. I didn' steal 'em. I just pressed 'em from a Secessiner."
"Jes so," said James "Mileage," "but they say you were a deserter at the time, and not exactly in the service of your country."
"Ye can't pay no 'tention ter rebel lies ergin Union men!" explained Scoggins, eating faster.
"Yes, that's so," said James "Mileage," "but there's another funny thing in the paper about you."
"What's that?" cried Scoggins with new alarm.
"That Mr. Scoggins met Sherman's army with loud talk about lovin' the Union, but that a mean Yankee officer gave him a cussin' fur not fightin' on one side or the other, took all that bacon he had stolen, hung him
"It's a lie! It's a lie!" bellowed Scoggins.
"Gentlemen! Gentlemen! we must not have such behaviour at my table!" exclaimed Mrs. Duke.
And "Hog" Scoggins was his name from that day.
By the end of the week another painful story was printed about one of this group of statesmen. The newspaper brutally declared that he had been convicted of stealing a rawhide from a neighbour's tanyard. It could not be denied. And then a sad thing happened. The moral sentiment of the little community could not endure the strain. It suddenly collapsed. They laughed at these incidents of the sad past and agreed that they were jokes. They began to call each other James "Mileage," "Hog" Scoggins, and "Rawhide "in the friendliest way, and dared a scornful world to make them feel ashamed of anything!
But the Rev. Ezra Perkins was pained by this breakdown. He felt that being safely removed two thousand miles from his own past, he might hope for a future.
"Mrs. Duke," he complained to his landlady, "I will have to ask you to give me a room to myself. I'll pay double. I want quiet where I can read my Bible and meditate occasionally."
"Certainly Mr. Perkins, if you are wining to pay for it."
It was so arranged. But this assumption of moral superiority by Perkins grieved "Mileage," "Hog" and "Rawhide," and a coolness sprang up between them, until they found Ezra one night in his place of meditation dead drunk and his room on fire. He had gone to sleep in his chair with his empty bottle by his side, and knocked the candle over on the bed. Then they agreed that forever after they would all stand together, shoulder to
Tim Shelby early distinguished himself in this August assemblage. His wit and eloquence from the first commanded the admiration of his party.
When he had fairly established himself as leader, he rose in his seat one day with unusual gravity. His scalp was working his ears with great rapidity showing his excitement.
He had in his hands a bill on which he had spent months in secret study. He had not even hinted its contents to any of his associates. Under the call for bills his voice rang with deep emphasis,
"Mr. Speaker!"
Legree gave him instant recognition.
"I desire to introduce the following: "A Bill to be Entitled An Act to Relieve Married Women from the Bonds of Matrimony when United to Felons, and to Define Felony."
A page hurried to the Reading Clerk with his bill.
The hum of voices ceased. The five or six representatives of the white race left their desks and walked quickly toward the Speaker. The Clerk read in a loud clear voice.
"The General Assembly of North Carolina do enact:
I "That all citizens of the State who took part in the Rebellion and fought against the Union, or held office in the so called Confederate States of America, shall be held guilty of felony, and shall be forever debarred from voting or holding office."
II "That the married relations of all such felons are hereby dissolved and their wives absolutely divorced, and said felons shall be forever barred from contracting marriage or living under the same roof with their former wives."
Instantly four Carpet-bagger members of some education rushed for Tim's seat. "Withdraw that bill, man, quick! My God, are you mad!" they all cried in a breath.
Tim was dazed by this unexpected turn, and grinned in an obstinate way.
"I can't see it gentlemen. That bill will kill out the breed of rebels and fix the status of every Southern state for five hundred years. It's just what we need to make this state loyal."
"You pass that bill and hell will break loose!"
"How so, brother? Ain't we on top and the rebels on the bottom? Ain't the army here to protect us?" persisted Tim.
There was a brief consultation among the little group in opposition and the leader said,
"Mr. Speaker, I move that the bill be at once printed and laid on the desk of the members for consideration."
Tim was astonished at this move of his enemy. Legree looked at him and waited his pleasure.
"Mr. Speaker, I withdraw that bill for the present," he said at length.
That night the wires were hot between Washington and Raleigh, and the entire power of Congress was hurled upon the unhappy Tim. His bill was not only suppressed but the news agencies were threatened and subsidised to prevent accounts of its introduction being circulated throughout the country.
Tim decided to lay this measure over until Congress was off his hands, and the state's autonomy fully recognised. Then he would dare interference. In the meantime he turned his great mind to financial matters. His success here was overwhelming.
His first measure was to increase the per diem of the
Uncle Pete Sawyer a coal-black fatherly looking old darkey from an Eastern county made himself immortal in that debate.
"Mistah Speakah!" he bawled drawing himself up with great dignity, and holding a pen in his left hand as though he had been writing. "What do dese white gem'men mean by exposen dis bill? Ef we doan pay de members enuf, day des be erbleeged ter steal. Hit aint right, sah, ter fo'ce de members er dis hon'able body ter prowl atter dark when day otter be here 'tendin' ter de business o' de country. En I moves you, sah, Mistah Speakah, dat dese rema'ks er mine be filed in de arkibes er grabity!"
They were filed and embalmed in the archives of gravity where they will remain a monument to their author and his times.
As Tim's great financial measures made progress, the members began to wear better clothes, assumed white linen shirts, had their shoes blacked, and put on the airs of overworked statesmen.
When they had used up all the funds of the state in mileage and per diem, they sold and divided the school fund, railroad bonds worth a half million, for a hundred thousand ready cash. It was soon found that Simon Legree, the Speaker of the House, was the master of financial measures and Tim Shelby was his mouthpiece.
Legree organised three groups of thieves composed of the officials needed to perfect the thefts in every branch of the government while he retained the leadership of the federated groups. The Treasurer, who was an honest man, was stripped of power by a special act.
The Capitol Ring merely picked up the odds and ends about the Capitol building. They refurnished the Legislative
An appropriation of three hundred thousand dollars was made for "supplies, sundries and incidentals." With this they built a booth around the statue of Washington at the end of the Capitol and established a bar with fine liquors and cigars for the free use of the members and their friends. They kept it open every day and night during their reign, and in a suite of rooms in the Capitol they established a brothel. From the galleries a swarm of courtesans daily smiled on their favourites on the floor.
The printing had never cost the state more than eight thousand dollars in any one year. This year it cost four hundred and eighty thousand. Legree drew thousands of warrants on the state for imaginary persons. There were eight pages in the House. He drew pay for one hundred and fifty-six pages. In this way he raised an enormous corruption fund for immediate use in bribing the lawmakers to carry through his schemes.
The Railroad Ring was his most effective group of brigands.
They passed bills authorising the issue of twenty-five millions of dollars in bonds, and actually issued and stole fourteen millions, and never built one foot of railroad.
When Legree's movement was at its high tide, Ezra Perkins sought Uncle Pete Sawyer one night in behalf of a pet measure of his pending in the House.
Peter was seated by his table counting by the light of a candle three big piles of gold.
His face was wreathed in smiles.
"Peter, you seem well pleased with the world tonight?" said Ezra gleefully.
"Well, brudder, you see dem piles er yaller money?"
"Yes, it is a fine sight."
Uncle Pete smacked his lips and grinned from ear to ear.
"Well, brudder, I tells you. I ben sol' seben times in my life, but 'fore Gawd dat's de fust time I ebber got de money!"
Uncle Pete dreamed that night that Congress passed a law extending the blessings of a "republican form of government" to North Carolina for forty years and that the Legislature never adjourned.
But the Legislature finally closed, and in a drunken revel which lasted all night. They had bankrupted the state, destroyed its school funds, and increased its debt from sixteen to forty-two millions of dollars, without adding one cent to its wealth or power.
Legree then organized a Municipal and County Ring to exploit the towns, cities, and counties, having passed a bill vacating all county and city offices.
This Ring secured the control of Hambright and levied a tax of twenty-five per cent for municipal purposes! Tom Camp's little home was assessed for eighty-five dollars in taxes. Mrs. Gaston's home was assessed for one hundred and sixty dollars. They could have raised a million as easily as the sum of these assessments.
It cost the United States government two hundred millions of dollars that year to pay the army required to guard the Legrees and their "loyal" men while they were thus establishing and maintaining "a republican form of government" in the South.
17.
CHAPTER XVII
THE SECOND REIGN OF TERROR
It was the bluest Monday the Rev. John Durham ever remembered in his ministry. A long drought had parched the corn into twisted and stunted little stalks that looked as though they had been burnt in a prairie fire. The fly had destroyed the wheat crop and the cotton was dying in the blistering sun of August, and a blight worse than drought, or flood, or pestilence, brooded over the stricken land, flinging the shadow of its Black Death over every home. The tax gatherer of the new "republican form of government," recently established in North Carolina now demanded his pound of flesh.
The Sunday before had been a peculiarly hard one for the Preacher. He had tried by the sheer power of personal sympathy to lift the despairing people out of their gloom and make strong their faith in God. In his morning sermon he had torn his heart open and given them its red blood to drink. At the night service he could not rally from the nerve tension of the morning. He felt that lie had pitiably failed. The whole day seemed failure black and hopeless.
All day long the sorrowful stories of ruin and loss of homes were poured into his ear.
The Sheriff had advertised for sale for taxes two thousand three hundred and twenty homes in Campbell county. The land under such conditions had no value.
As he arose from bed with the burden of all this hopeless misery crushing his soul, a sense of utter exhaustion and loneliness came over him.
"My love, I must go back to bed and try to sleep. I lay awake last night until two o'clock. I can't eat anything," he said to his wife as she announced breakfast.
"John, dear, don't give up like that."
"Can't help it."
"But you must. Come, here is something that will tone you up. I found this note under the front door this morning."
"What is it?"
"A notice from some of your admirers that you must leave this county in forty-eight hours or take the consequences."
He looked at this anonymous letter and smiled.
"Not such a failure after all, am I?" he mused.
"I thought that would help, you," she laughed.
"Yes, I can eat breakfast on the strength of that."
He spread this letter out beside his plate, and read and reread it as he ate while his eyes flashed with a strange half humourous light.
"Really, that's fine, isn't it?" "You sower of sedition and rebellion, hypocrite and false prophet. The day has come to clean this county of treason and traitors. If you dare to urge the people to further resistance to authority, there will be one traitor less in this county."
"That sounds like the voice of a Daniel come to judgment, don't it?"
"I think Ezra Perkins might know something about it."
"I am sure of it."
"Well, I'm duly grateful, it's done for you what your wife couldn't do, cheered you up this morning!"
"That is so, isn't it? It takes a violent poison sometimes to stimulate the heart's action."
"Now if you will work the garden for me, where I've been watering it the past month, you will be yourself by dinner time."
"I will. That's about all we've got to eat. I've had so salary in two months, and I've no prospects for the next two months."
He was at work in the garden when Charlie Gaston suddenly ran through the gate toward him. His face was red, his eyes streaming with tears, and his breath coming in gasps.
"Doctor, they've killed Nelse! Mama says please come down to our house as quick as you can."
"Is he dead, Charlie?"
"He's most dead. I found him down in the woods lying in a gully, one leg is broken, there's a big gash over his eye, his back is beat to a jelly, and one of his arms is broken. We put him in the wagon, and hauled him to the house. I'm afraid he's dead now. Oh me!" The boy broke down and choked with sobs.
"Run, Charlie, for the doctor, and I'll be there in a minute."
The boy flew through the gate to the doctor's house.
When the Preacher reached Mrs. Gaston's, Aunt Eve was wiping the blood from Nelse's mouth.
"De Lawd hab mussy! My po' ole man's done kilt."
"Who could have done this, Eve?"
"Dem Union Leaguers. Day say day wuz gwine ter kill him fur not jinin' 'em, en fur tryin' ter vote ergin 'em."
"I've been afraid of it," sighed the Preacher as he felt Nelse's pulse.
"Yassir, en now day's done hit. My po' ole man. I wish I'd a been better ter 'im. Lawd Jesus, help me now!"
Eve knelt by the bed and laid her face against Nelse's while the tears rained down her black face.
"Aunt Eve, it may not be so bad," said the Preacher hopefully. "His pulse is getting stronger. He has an iron constitution. I believe he will pull through, if there are no internal injuries."
"Praise God! ef he do git well, I tell yer now, Marse John, I fling er spell on dem niggers bout dis!"
"I am afraid you can do nothing with them. The courts are all in the hands of these scoundrels, and the Governor of the state is at the head of the Leagues."
"I doan want no cotes, Marse John, I'se cote ennuf. I kin cunjure dem niggers widout any cote."
The doctor pronounced his injuries dangerous but not necessarily fatal. Charlie and Dick watched with Eve that night until nearly midnight. Nelse opened his eyes, and saw the eager face of the boy, his eyes yet red from crying.
"I aint dead, honey!" he moaned.
"Oh! Nelse, I'm so glad!"
"Doan you believe I gwine die! I gwine ter git eben wid dem niggers 'fore I leab dis worl'."
Nelse spoke feebly, but there was a way about his saying it that boded no good to his enemies, and Eve was silent. As Nelse improved, Eve's wrath steadily rose.
The next day she met in the street one of the negroes who had threatened Nelse.
"How's Mistah Gaston dis mawnin 'M'am?" he asked.
Without a word of warning she sprang on him like a tigress, bore him to the ground, grasped him by the throat and pounded his head against a stone. She would have
"Lemme lone, man, I'se doin' de wuk er God!"
"You're committing murder, woman."
When the negro got up he jumped the fence and tore down through a corn field, as though pursued by a hundred devils, now and then glancing over his shoulder to see if Eve were after him.
The Preacher tried in vain to bring the perpetrators of this outrage on Nelse to justice. He identified six of them positively. They were arrested, and when put on trial immediately discharged by the judge who was himself a member of the League that had ordered Nelse whipped.
* * * * * *
Tom Camp's daughter was now in her sixteenth year and as plump and winsome a lassie, her Scotch mother declared, as the Lord ever made. She was engaged to be married to Hose Norman, a gallant poor white from the high hill country at the foot of the mountains. Hose came to see her every Sunday riding a black mule, gaily trapped out in martingales with red rings, double girths to his saddle and a flaming red tassel tied on each side of the bridle. Tom was not altogether pleased with his future so-in-law. He was too wild, went to too many frolics, danced too much, drank too much whiskey and was too handy with a revolver.
"Annie, child, you'd better think twice before you step off with that young buck," Tom gravely warned his daughter as he stroked her fair hair one Sunday morning while she waited for Hose to escort her to church.
"I have thought a hundred times, Paw, but what's the use. I love him. He can just twist me 'round his little finger. I've got to have him."
"Tom Camp, you don't want to forget you were not a saint when I stood up with you one day," cried his wife with a twinkle in her eye.
"That's a fact, ole woman," grinned Tom.
"You never give me a day's trouble after I got hold of you. Sometimes the wildest colts make the safest horses"
"Yes, that's so. It's owing to who has the breaking of 'em," thoughtfully answered Tom.
"I like Hose. He's full of fun, but he'll settle down and make her a good husband."
The girl slipped close to her mother and squeezed her hand.
"Do you love him much, child?" asked her father.
"Well enough to live and scrub and work for him and to die for him, I reckon."
"All right, that settles it, you're too many for me, you and Hose and your Maw. Get ready for it quick. We'll have the weddin' Wednesday night. This home is goin' to be sold Thursday for taxes and it will be our last night under our own roof. We'll make the best of it."
It was so fixed. On Wednesday night Hose came down from the foothills with three kindred spirits, and an old fiddler to make the music. He wanted to have a dance and plenty of liquor fresh from the mountain-dew district. But Tom put his foot down on it.
"No dancin' in my house, Hose, and no licker," said Tom with emphasis. "I'm a deacon in the Baptist church. I used to be young and as good lookin' as you, my boy, but I've done with them things. You're goin' to take my little gal now. I want you to quit your foolishness be a man."
"I will, Tom, I will. She is the prettiest sweetest little thing in this world, and to tell you the truth I'm
"That's the way to talk, my boy,"said Tom putting his hand an Hose's shoulder. "You'll have enough to do these hard times to make a livin'."
They made a handsome picture, in that humble home, as they stood there before the Preacher. The young bride was trembling from head to foot with fright. Hose was trying to look grave and dignified and grinning in spite of himself whenever he looked into the face of his blushing mate. The mother was standing near, her face full of pride in her daughter's beauty and happiness, her heart all a quiver with the memories of her own wedding day seventeen years before. Tom was thinking of the morrow when he would be turned out of his home and his eyes filled with tears.
The Rev. John Durham had pronounced them man and wife and hurried away to see some people who were sick. The old fiddler was doing his best. Hose and his bride were shaking hands with their friends, and the boys were trying to tease the bridegroom with hoary old jokes.
Suddenly a black shadow fell across the doorway. The fiddle ceased, and every eye was turned to the door. The burly figure of a big negro trooper from a company stationed in the town stood before them. His face was in a broad grin, and his eyes bloodshot with whiskey. He brought his musket down on the floor with a bang.
"My frien's, I'se sorry ter disturb yer but I has orders ter search dis house."
"Show your orders," said Tom hobbling before him.
"Well, deres one un 'em !" he said still grinning as be cocked his gun and presented it toward Tom. "En ef dat aint ennuf day's fifteen mo' stanin' 'roun' dis house. It's no use ter make er fuss. Come on, boys!"
"COME ON BOYS!"
[Description: Illustration of a group of people sitting or standing in a room looking at the door as a group of African Americans with guns enter the room. ]Before Tom could utter another word of protest six more negro troopers laughing and nudging one another crowded into the room. Suddenly one of them threw a bucket of water in the fire place where a pine knot blazed and two others knocked out the candles.
There was a scuffle, the quick thud of heavy blows, and Hose Norman fell to the floor senseless. A piercing scream rang from his bride as she was seized in the arms of the negro who first appeared. He rapidly bore her toward the door surrounded by the six scoundrels who had accompanied him.
"My God, save her! They are draggin' Annie out of the house," shrieked her mother.
"Help! Help! Lord have mercy!" screamed the girl as they bore her away toward the woods, still laughing and yelling.
Tom overtook one of them, snatched his wooden leg off, and knocked him down. Hose's mountain boys were crowding round Tom with their pistols in their hands.
"What shall we do, Tom? If we shoot we may kill Annie."
"Shoot, man! My God, shoot! There are things worse than death!"
They needed no urging. Like young tigers they sprang across the orchard toward the woods whence came the sound of the laughter of the negroes.
"Stop de screechin'!" cried the leader.
"She nebber get dat gag out now."
"Too smart fur de po' white trash dis time sho'!" laughed one.
Three pistol shots rang out like a single report! Three more! and three more! There was a wild scramble. Taken completely by surprise, the negroes fled in confusion. Four lay on the ground. Two were dead, one mortally wounded and three more had crawled away with bullets
"Is she hurt?" cried a mountain boy.
"Can't tell, take her to the house quick."
They laid her across the bed in the room that had been made sweet and tidy for the bride and groom. The mother bent over her quickly with a light. Just where the blue veins crossed in her delicate temple there was a round hole from which a scarlet stream was running down her white throat.
Without a word the mother brought Tom, showed it to him, and then fell into his arms and burst into a flood of tears.
"Don't, don't cry so Annie! It might have been worse. Let us thank God she was saved from them brutes."
Hose's friends crowded round Tom now with tear-stained faces.
"Tom, you don't know how broke up we all are over this. Poor child, we did the best we could."
"It's all right, boys. You've been my friends to-night. You've saved my little gal. I want to shake hands with you and thank you. If you hadn't been here—My God, I can't think of what would 'a happened! Now it's all right. She's safe in God's hands."
The next morning when Tom Camp called at the parsonage to see the Preacher and arrange for the funeral of his daughter he found him in bed.
"Dr. Durham is quite sick, Mr. Camp, but he'll see you,"said Mrs. Durham.
"Thank you, M'am."
She took the old soldier by his hand and her voice choked as she said,
"You have my heart's deepest sympathy in your awful sorrow."
"It'll be all be the for best, M'am. The Lord gave and
"I wish I had such faith." She led Tom into the room where the Preacher lay.
"Why, what's this, Preacher? A bandage over your eye, looks like somebody knocked you in the head?"
"Yes, Tom, but it's nothing. I'll be all right by to-morrow. You needn't tell me anything that happened at your house. I've heard the black hell-lit news. It will be all over this county by night and the town will be full of grim-visaged men before many hours. Your child has not died in vain. A few things like this will be the trumpet of the God of our fathers that will call the sleeping manhood of the Anglo-Saxon race to life again. I must be up and about this afternoon to keep down the storm. It is not time for it to break."
"But, Preacher, what happened to you?"
"Oh! nothing much, Tom."
"I'll tell you what happened," cried Mrs. Durham standing erect with her great dark eyes flashing with anger.
"As he came home last night from a visit to the sick, he was ambushed by a gang of negroes led by a white scoundrel, knocked down, bound and gagged and placed on a pile of dry fence rails. They set fire to the pile and left him to burn to death. It attracted the attention of Doctor Graham who was passing. He got to him in time to save him."
"You don't say so!"
"I'm sorry, Tom, I'm so weak this morning I couldn't come to see you. I know your poor wife is heartbroken."
"Yes, sir, she is, and it cuts me to the quick when I think that I gave the orders to the boys to shoot. But, Preacher, I'd a killed her with own hand if I couldn't
"I don't blame you, I'd have done the same thing. I can't come to see you to-day, Tom, I'll be down to your house to-morrow a few minutes before we start for the cemetery. I must get up for dinner and prevent the men from attacking these troops. They'll not dare to try to sell your place to-day. The public square is full of men now, and it's only nine o'clock. You go home and cheer up your wife. How is Hose?"
"He's still in bed. The Doctor says his skull is broken in one place, but he'll be over it in a few weeks."
Tom hobbled back to his house, shaking hands with scores of silent men on the way.
The Preacher crawled to his desk and wrote this note to the young officer in command of the post,
MY DEAR CAPTAIN,
In the interest of peace and order I would advise you to telegraph to
Independence for two companies of white regulars to come immediately on
a special, and that you start your negro troops on double quick marching
order to meet them. There will be a thousand armed men in Hambright by
sundown, and no power on earth can prevent the extermination of that
negro company if they attack them. I will do my best to prevent further
bloodshed but I can do nothing if these troops remain here to-day.
Respectfully,
JOHN DURHAM.
The Commandant acted an the advice immediately.
* * * * * *
It was the week following before the sales began. There was no help for it. The town and the county
"Mr. Legree, let's understand one another," said the General.
"All right, I'm a man of reason."
"A bird in hand is worth two in the bush!"
"Every time, General."
"Well, call off your dogs, and rescind your order for a thirty per cent tax levy, and I'll raise $30,000 in cash and pay it to you in two days."
"Make it $50,000 and it's a bargain."
"Agreed."
The General raised twenty thousand in the city, went North and borrowed the remaining thirty thousand.
Legree and his brigands received this ransom and moved on to the next town.
Poor Hambright was but a scrawny little village on a red hill with no big values to be saved, and no mills to interest the commercial world, and the auctioneer lifted his hammer.
19.
CHAPTER XIX
THE RALLY OF THE CLANSMEN
When the Preacher took the train in Boston for the South, his friendly merchant, a deacon, was by his side.
"Now, you put my name and address down in your note book, William Crane. And don't forget about us."
"I'll never forget you, deacon."
"Say, I just as well tell you," whispered the deacon bending close, "we are not going to allow you to stay down South. We'll be down after you before long—just as well be packing up."
The Preacher smiled, looked out of the car window, and made no reply.
"Well, good-bye, Doctor, good-bye. God bless you and your work and your people! You've brought me a message warm from God's heart. I'll never forget it."
"Good-bye deacon."
As the train whirled southward through the rich populous towns and cities of the North, again the sharp contrast with the desolation of his own land cut him like a knife. He thought of Legree and Haley, Perkins and Tim Shelby robbing widows and orphans and sweeping the poverty-stricken Southland with riot, pillage, murder and brigandage, and posing as the representatives of the conscience of the North. And his heart was heavy with sorrow.
On reaching Hambright he was thunderstruck at the
"Why, my dear, I sent the money to her on the first Monday I spent in Boston!" he declared to his wife.
"It never reached her."
"Then Dave Haley, the dirty slave driver, has held that letter. I'll see to this." He hurried to the post-office.
"Mr. Haley," he exclaimed, "I sent a money order letter to Mrs. Gaston from Boston on Monday a week ago."
"Yes, sir," answered Haley in his blandest manner, "it got here the day after the sale."
"You're an infamous liar!" shouted the Preacher.
"Of course! Of course! All Union men are liars to bear rebel traitors talk."
"I'll report you to Washington for this rascality."
"So do, so do. Mor'n likely the President and the Post-Office Department 'll be glad to have this information from so great a man."
As the Preacher was leaving the post-office be encountered the Hon. Tim Shelby dressed in the height of fashion, his silk hat shining in the sun, and his eyes rolling with the joy of living. The Preacher stepped squarely in front of Tim.
"Tim Shelby, I hear you have moved into Mrs. Gaston's home and are using her furniture. By whose authority do you dare such insolence?"
"By authority of the law, sir. Mrs. Gaston died intestate. Her effects are in the hands of our County Administrator, Mr. Ezra Perkins. I'll be pleased to receive you, sir, any time you would like to call I!" said Tim with a bow.
"I'll call in due time," replied the Preacher, looking Tim straight in the eye.
Haley had been peeping through the window, watching and listening to this encounter.
"'These charmin' preachers think they own this county, brother Shelby," laughed Haley as he grasped Tim's outstretched hand.
"Yes, they are the curse of the state. I wish to God they had succeeded in burning him alive that night the boys tried it. They'll get him later on. Brother Haley, he's a dangerous man. He must be put out of the way, or we'll never have smooth sailing in this county."
"I believe you're right, he's just been in here cussin' me about that letter of the widder's that didn't get to her in time. He thinks he can run the post-office."
"Well, we'll show him this county's in the hands of the loyal!" added Tim.
"Heard the news from Charleston?"
"Heard it? I guess I have. I talked with the commanding General in Charleston two weeks ago. He told me then he was going to set aside that decision of the Supreme Court in a ringing order permitting the marriage of negroes to white women, and commanding its enforcement on every military post. I see he's done it in no uncertain words."
"It's a great day, brother, for the world. There'll be no more colour line."
"Yes, times have changed," said Tim with a triumphant smile. "I guess our white hot-bloods will sweat and bluster and swear a little when they read that order. But we've got the bayonets to enforce it. They'd just as well cool down."
"That's the stuff," said Haley, taking a fresh chew of tobacco.
"Let 'em squirm. They're flat on their backs. We are on top, and we are going to stay on top. I expect to lead a fair white bride into my house before another year
"That'll be a sight won't it!" exclaimed Haley with delight. "Where's that scoundrel Nelse that lived with Mrs. Gaston ?"
"Oh, we fixed him," said Tim. "The black rascal wouldn't join the League, and wouldn't vote with his people, and still showed fight after we beat him half to death, so we put a levy of fifty dollars on his cabin, sold him out, and every piece of furniture, and every rag of clothes we could get hold of. He'll leave the country now, or we'll kill him next time."
"You ought to a killed him the first time, and then the job would ha' been over."
"Oh, we'll have the country in good shape in a little while, and don't you forget it."
The news of the order of the military commandant at "District No. 2," comprising the Carolinas, abrogating the decisions of the North Carolina Supreme Court, forbidding the intermarriage of negroes and whites, fell like a bombshell on Campbell county. The people had not believed that the military authorities would dare go to the length of attempting to force social equality.
This order from Charleston was not only explicit, its language was peculiarly emphatic. It apparently commanded intermarriage, and ordered the military to enforce the command at the point of the bayonet.
The feelings of the people were wrought to the pitch of fury. It needed but a word from a daring leader, and a massacre of every negro, scalawag and carpet-bagger in the county might have followed. The Rev. John Durham was busy day and night seeking to allay excitement and prevent an uprising of the white population.
Along with the announcement of this military order,
Legree was in Washington at the time an a mission to secure a stand of twenty thousand rifles from the Secretary of War, with which to arm the negro troop he was drilling for the approaching election. The grant was made and Legree came back in triumph with his rifles.
Relief for the ruined people was now a hopeless dream. Black despair was clutching at every white man's heart. The taxpayers had held a convention and sent their representatives to Washington exposing the monstrous thefts that were being committed under the authority of the government by the organised band of thieves who were looting the state. But the thieves were the pets of politicians high in power. The committee of taxpayers were insulted and sent home to pay their taxes.
And then a thing happened in Hambright that brought matters to a sudden crisis.
The Hon. Tim Shelby as school commissioner, had printed the notices for an examination of school teachers for Campbell county. An enormous tax had been levied and collected by the county for this purpose, but no school had been opened. Tim announced, however, that the school would be surely opened the first Monday in October.
Miss Mollie Graham, the pretty niece of the old doctor, was struggling to support a blind mother and four younger children. Her father and brother had been killed in the war. Their house had been sold for taxes, and they were required now to pay Tim Shelby ten dollars a month for rent. When she saw that school notice
She fairly ran to the Preacher to get his advice.
"Certainly, child, try for it. It's humiliating to ask such a favour of that black ape, but if you can save your loved ones, do it."
So with trembling hand she knocked at Tim's door. He required all applicants to apply personally at his house. Tim met her with the bows and smirks of a dancing master.
"Delighted to see your pretty face this morning, Miss Graham," he cried enthusiastically.
The girl blushed and hesitated at the door.
"Just walk right in the parlour, I'll join you in a moment."
She bravely set her lips and entered.
"And now what can I do for you, Miss Graham?"
"I've come to apply for a teacher's place in the school."
"Ah indeed, I'm glad to know that. There is only one difficulty. You must be loyal. Your people were rebels, and the new government has determined to have only loyal teachers."
"I think I'm loyal enough to the old flag now that our people have surrendered," said the girl.
"Yes, yes, I dare say, but do you think you can accept the new régime of government and society which we are now establishing in the South? We have abolished the colour line. Would you have a mixed school if assigned one?"
"I think Id prefer to teach a negro school outright to a mixed one," she said after a moment's hesitation.
Tim continued, "You know we are living in a new world. The supreme law of the land has broken down every barrier of race and we are henceforth to be one people. The struggle for existence knows no race or
The girl suddenly rose impelled by some resistless instinct.
"May I have the place then?" she asked approaching the door.
"Well, now you know it depends really altogether on my fancy. I'll tell you what I'll do. You're still full of silly prejudices. I can see that. But if you will overcome them enough to do one thing for me as a test, that will cost you nothing and of which the world will never be the wiser, I'll give you the place and more, I'll remit the ten dollars a month rent you're now paying. Will you do it?"
"What is it?" the girl asked with pale quivering lips.
"Let me kiss you—once!" he whispered.
With a scream, she sprang past him out of the door, ran like a deer across the lawn, and fell sobbing in her mother's arms when she reached her home.
The next day the town was unusually quiet. Tim had business with the Commandant of the company of regulars still quartered at Hambright. He spent most of the day with him, and walked about the streets ostentatiously showing his familiarity with the corporal who accompanied him. A guard of three soldiers was stationed around Tim's house for two nights and then withdrawn.
The next night at twelve o'clock two hundred white-robed horses assembled around the old home of Mrs. Gaston where Tim was sleeping. The moon was full and flooded the lawn with silver glory. On those horses sat two hundred white-robed silent men whose close-fitting hood disguises looked like the mail helmets of ancient knights.
It was the work of a moment to seize Tim, and bind
When the sun rose next morning the lifeless body of Tim Shelby was dangling from a rope tied to the iron rail of the balcony of the court house. His neck was broken and his body was hanging low—scarcely three feet from the ground. His thick lips had been split with a sharp knife and from his teeth hung this placard:
"The answer of the Anglo-Saxon race to Negro lips that dare pollute with words the womanhood of the South. K. K. K."
And the Ku Klux Klan was master of Campbell county.
The origin of this Law and Order League which sprang up like magic in a night and nullified the programme of Congress though backed by an army of a million veteran soldiers, is yet a mystery.
The simple truth is, it was a spontaneous and resistless racial uprising of clansmen of highland origin living along the Appalachian mountains and foothills of the South, and it appeared almost simultaneously in every Southern state produced by the same terrible conditions.
It was the answer to their foes of a proud and indomitable race of men driven to the wall. In the hour of their defeat they laid down their arms and accepted in good faith the results of the war. And then, when unarmed and defenceless, a group of pot-house politicians for political ends, renewed the war, and attempted to wipe out the civilisation of the South.
This Invisible Empire of White Robed Anglo-Saxon Knights was simply the old answer of organised manhood to organised crime. Its purpose was to bring order out of chaos, protect the weak and defenseless, the widows and orphans of brave men who had died for their country, to drive from power the thieves who were robbing
Within one week from its appearance, life and property were as safe as in any Northern community.
When the negroes came home from their League meeting one night they ran terror stricken past long rows of white horsemen. Not a word was spoken, but that was the last meeting the "Union League of America" ever held in Hambright.
Every negro found guilty of a misdemeanor was promptly thrashed and warned against its recurrence. The sudden appearance of this host of white cavalry grasping at their throats with the grip of cold steel struck the heart of Legree and his followers with the chill of a deadly fear.
It meant inevitable ruin, overthrow, and a prison cell for the "loyal" statesmen who were with him in his efforts to maintain the new "republican form of government" in North Carolina.
At the approaching election, this white terror could intimidate every negro in the state unless he could arm them all, suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus, and place every county under the strictest martial law.
Washington was besieged by a terrified army of the "loyal" who saw their occupation threatened. They begged for more troops, more guns for negro militia, and for the reestablishment of universal martial law until the votes were properly counted.
But the great statesmen laughed them to scorn as a set of weak cowards and fools frightened by negro stories of ghosts. It was incredible to them that the crushed, poverty stricken and unarmed South could dare challenge the power of the National Government. They were sent back with scant comfort.
The night that Ezra Perkins and Haley got back from
At ten o'clock, the Ku Klux Klan held a formal parade through the streets of Hambright. How the news was circulated nobody knew, but it seemed everybody in the county knew of it. The streets were lined with thousands of people who had poured in town that afternoon.
At exactly ten o'clock, a bugle call was heard on the hill to the west of the town, and the muffled tread of soft shod horses came faintly on their ears. Women stood on the sidewalks, holding their babies and smiling, and children were laughing and playing in the streets.
They rode four abreast in perfect order slowly through the town. It was utterly impossible to recognise a man or a horse, so complete was the simple disguise of the white sheet which blanketed the horse fitting closely over his head and ears and falling gracefully over his form toward the ground.
No citizen of Hambright was in the procession. They were all in the streets watching it pass. There were fifteen hundred men in line. But the reports next day all agreed in fixing the number at over five thousand.
Perkins and Haley had watched it from a darkened room.
"Brother Haley, that's the end! Lord I wish I was back in Michigan, jail er no jail," said Perkins mopping the perspiration from his brow.
"We'll have ter dig out purty quick, I reckon," answered Haley.
"And to think them fools at Washington laughed at us!" cried Perkins clinching his fists.
And that night, mothers and fathers gathered their children to bed with a sense of grateful security not felt through years of war and turmoil.
20.
CHAPTER XX
HOW CIVILISATION WAS SAVED
The success of the Ku Klux Klan was so complete, its organisers were dazed. Its appeal to the ignorance and superstition of the Negro at once reduced the race to obedience and order. Its threat against the scalawag and carpet-bagger struck terror to their craven souls, and the "Union League," "Red Strings," and "Heroes of America" went to pieces with incredible rapidity.
Major Stuart Dameron, the chief of the Klan in Campbell county, was holding a conference with the Rev. John Durham in his study.
"Doctor, our work has succeeded beyond our wildest dream."
"Yes, and I thank God we can breathe freely if only for a moment, Major. The danger now lies in our success. We are necessarily playing with fire."
"I know it, and it requires my time day and night to prevent reckless men from disgracing us."
"It will not be necessary to enforce the death penalty against any other man in this county, Major. The execution of Tim Shelby was absolutely necessary at the time and it has been sufficient."
"I agree with you. I've impressed this on the matter of every lodge, but some of them are growing reckless."
"Who are they?"
"Young Allan McLeod for one. He is a dare devil and only eighteen years old."
"He's a troublesome boy. I don't seem to have any influence with him. But I think Mrs. Durham can manage him. He seems to think a great deal of her, and in spite of his wild habits, he comes regularly to her Sunday School class."
"I hope she can bring him to his senses."
"Leave him to me then a while. We will see what can be done."
* * * * * *
Hogg's Legislature promptly declared the Scotch-Irish hill counties in a state of insurrection, passed a militia bill, and the Governor issued a proclamation suspending the writ of Habeas Corpus in these counties.
Fearing the effects of negro militia in the hill districts, he surprised Hambright by suddenly marching into the court house square a regiment of white mountain guerillas recruited from the outlaws of East Tennessee and commanded by a noted desperado, Colonel Henry Berry. The regiment had two pieces of field artillery.
It was impossible for them to secure evidence against any member of the Klan unless by the intimidation of some coward who could be made to confess. Not a disguise had even been penetrated. It was the rule of the order for its decrees to be executed in the district issuing the decree by the lodge furthest removed in the county from the scene. In this way not a man or a horse was ever identified.
The Colonel made an easy solution of this difficulty, however. Acting under instructions from Governor Hogg, he secured from Haley and Perkins a list of every influential man in every precinct in the county, and a list of possible turncoats and cowards. He detailed five hundred of his men to make arrests, distributed them throughout the county and arrested without warrants over two hundred citizens in one day.
The next day Berry hand-cuffed together the Rev. John Durham and Major Dameron, and led than escorted by a company of cavalry on a grand circuit of the county, that the people might be terrified by the sight of their chains. An ominous silence greeted them on every hand. Additional arrests were made by this troop and twenty-five more prisoners led into Hambright the next day."
The jail was crowded, and the court house was used as a jail. Over a hundred and fifty men were confined in the court room. Rev. John Durham was everywhere among the crowd, laughing, joking and cheering the men.
"Major Dameron, a jail never held so many honest men before," he said with a smile, as he looked over the crowd of his church members gathered from every quarter of the county.
"Well, Doctor, you've got a quorum here of your church and you can call them to order for business."
"That's a fact, isn't it?"
"There's old Deacon Kline over there who looks like he wished he hadn't come! The Preacher walked over to the deacon.
"What's the matter, brother Kline, you look pensive."
The deacon laughed. "Yes, I don't like my bed. I'm used to feathers."
"Well, they say they are going to give you feathers mixed with tar so you won't lose them so easily."
"I'll have company, I reckon," said the deacon with a wink.
"The funny thing, deacon, is that Major Dameron tells me there isn't a man in all the crowd of two hundred fifty arrested who ever went on a raid. It's too bad you old fellows have to pay for the follies of youth."
"It is tough. But we can stand it, Preacher." They clasped hands.
"Haven't smelled a coward anywhere have you, deacon?"
"I've seen one or two a little fidgety, I thought. Cheer 'em up with a word, Preacher."
Springing on the platform of the judge's desk he looked ever the crowd for a moment, and a cheer shook the building.
"Boys, I don't believe there's a single coward in our ranks." Another cheer.
"Just keep cool now and let our enemies do the talking. In ten days every man of you will be back at home at his work."
"How will we get out with the writ suspended?" asked a man standing near.
"That's the richest thing of all. A United States judge has just decided that the Governor of the state cannot suspend the rights of a citizen of the United States under the new Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution so recently rammed down our throats. Hogg is hoisted on his own petard. Our lawyers are now serving out writs of Habeas Corpus before this Federal judge under the Fourteenth Amendment, and you will be discharged in less than ten days unless there's a skunk among you. And I don't smell one anywhere." Again a cheer shook the building.
An orderly walked up to the Preacher and handed him a note.
"Read it!" the men crowded around.
"Read it, Major Dameron, I'm dumb," said the Preacher.
"A military order from the dirty rascal, Berry, commanding the mountain bummers, forbidding the Rev. John Durham, to speak during his imprisonment!"
A roar of laughter followed this announcement.
"That's cruel! It'll kill him!" cried Deacon Kline as he jabbed the Preacher in the ribs.
In a few minutes, the Preacher was back in his place with five of the best singers from his church by his side. He began to sing the old hymns of Zion and every man in the room joined until the building quivered with melody.
"Now a good old Yankee hymn, that suits this hour, written by an old Baptist preacher I met in Boston the other day!" cried the Preacher.
Sweet land of liberty,
of thee I sing!"
Heavens, how they sang it, while the Preacher lined it off, stood above them beating time, and led in a clear mighty Voice! Again the orderly appeared with a note.
"What is it now?" they cried on every side.
Again Major Dameron announced "Military order No. 2, forbidding the Rev. John Durham to sing or induce anybody to sing while is prison."
Another roar of laughter that broke into a cheer which made the glass rattle. When the soldier had disappeared, the Rev. John Durham ascended the platform, looked about him with a humourous twinkle in his eye, straightened himself to his full height and crowded like a rooster! A cheer shook the building to its foundations. Roar after roar of its defiant cadence swept across the square and made Haley and Perkins tremble as they looked at each other over their conference table with Berry.
"What the devil's the matter now?" cried Haley.
"Do you suppose it's a rescue?" whispered Perkins.
"No, it's some new trick of that damned Preacher. I'll chain him in a room to himself," growled Berry.
"Better not, Colonel. He's the pet of these white devils. Ye'd better let him alone." Berry accepted the advice.
Five days later the prisoners were arraigned before the United States judge, Preston Rivers, at Independence. Not a scrap of evidence could be produced against them. Governor Hogg was present, with a flaming military escort. He held a stormy interview with Judge Rivers.
"If you discharge these prisoners, you destroy the government of this state, sir!" thundered Hogg.
"Are they not citizens of the United States? Does not the Fourteenth Amendment apply to a white man as well as a negro?" quietly asked the judge.
"Yes, but they are conspirators against the Union. They are murderers and felons."
"Then prove it in my court and I'll hand them back to you. They are entitled to a trial, under our Constitution."
"I'll demand your removal by the President," shouted Hogg.
"Get out of this room, or I'll remove you with the point of my boot!" thundered the judge with rising wrath. "You have suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus to win a political campaign. The Ku Klux Klan has broken up your Leagues. You are fighting for your life. But I'll tell you now, you can't suspend the Constitution of the United States while I'm a Federal judge in this state. I am not a henchman of yours to do your dirty campaign work. The election is but ten days off. Your scheme is plain enough. But if you want to keep these men in prison it will be done on sworn evidence of guilt and a warrant, not on your personal whim."
The Governor cursed, raved and threatened in vain. Judge Rivers discharged every prisoner and warned Colonel
When these prisoners were discharged, a great mass-meeting was called to give them a reception in the public square of Independence. A platform was hastily built in the square and that night five thousand excited people crowded past the stand, shook hands with the men and cheered till they were hoarse. The Governor watched the demonstration in helpless fury from his room in the hotel.
The speaking began at nine o'clock. Every discordant element of the old South's furious political passions was now melted into harmonious unity. Whig and Democrat who had fought one another with relentless hatred sat side by side on that platform. Secessionist and Unionist now clasped hands. It was a White Man's Party, and against it stood in solid array the Black Man's Party, led by Simon Legree.
Henceforth there could be but one issue, are you a White Man or a Negro?
They declared there was but one question to be settled:—
"Shall the future American be an Anglo-Saxon or a Mulatto?
These determined impassioned men believed that this question was more important than any theory of tariff or finance and that it was larger than the South, or even the nation, and held in its solution the brightest hopes of the progress of the human race. And they believed that they were ordained of God in this crisis to give this question its first authoritative answer.
The state burst into a flame of excitement that fused in its white heat the whole Anglo-Saxon race.
In vain Hogg marched and counter-marched his twenty thousand state troops. They only added fuel to
Hogg and Legree were in panic of fear with the certainty of defeat, exposure and a felon's cell before them.
Two days before the election, the prayer meeting was held at eight o'clock in the Baptist church at Hambright. It was the usual mid-week service, but the attendance was unusually large.
After the meeting, the Preacher, Major Dameron, and eleven men quietly walked back to the church and assembled in the pastor's study. The door opened at the rear of the church and could be approached by a side street.
"Gentlemen," said Major Dameron, "I've asked you here to-night to deliver to you the most important order I have ever given, and to have Dr. Durham as our chaplain to aid me in impressing on you its great urgency."
"We're ready for orders, Chief," said young Ambrose Kline, the deacon's son.
"You are to call out every troop of the Klan in full force the night before the election. You are to visit every negro in the county, and warn every one as he values his life not to approach the polls at this election. Those who come, will be allowed to vote without molestation. All cowards will stay at home. Any man, black or white, who can be scared out of his ballot is not fit to have one. Back of every ballot is the red blood of the man that votes. The ballot is force. This is simply a test of manhood. It will be enough to show who is fit to rule the state. As the masters of the eleven township lodges of the Klan, you are the sole guardians of society to-day.
"We will do it, sir," cried Kline.
"Let me say, men," said the Preacher, "that I heartily endorse the plan of your chief. See that the work is done thoroughly and it will be done for all time. In a sense this is fraud. But it is the fraud of war. The spy is a fraud, but we must use him when we fight. Is war justifiable?
"It is too late now for us to discuss that question. We an in a war, the most ghastly and hellish ever waged, a war on women and children, the starving and the wounded, and that with sharpened swords. The Turk and Saracen once waged such a war. We must face it and fight it out. Shall we flinch?"
"No! no!" came the passionate answer from every man.
"You are asked to violate for the moment a statutory law. There is a higher law. You are the sworn officers of that higher law."
The group of leaders left the church with enthusiasm and on the following night they carried out their instructions to the letter.
The election was remarkably quiet. Thousands of soldiers were used at the polls by Hogg's orders. But they seemed to make no impression on the determined men who marched up between their files and put the ballots in the box.
Legree's ticket was buried beneath an avalanche. The new "Conservative" party carried every county in the state save twelve and elected one hundred and six members of the new legislature out of a total of one hundred and twenty.
The next day hundreds of carpet-bagger thieves fled to tie North, and Legree led the procession.
Legree had on deposit in New York two millions of dollars, and the total amount of his part of the thefts he had engineered reached five millions. He opened an office on Wall Street, bought a seat in the Stock Exchange, and became one of the most daring and successful of a group of robbers who preyed on the industries of the nation.
The new Legislature appointed a Fraud Commission which uncovered the infamies of the Legree régime, but every thief had escaped. They promptly impeached the Governor and removed him from office, and the old commonwealth once more lifted up her head and took her place in the ranks of civilised communities.
21.
CHAPTER XXI
THE OLD AND THE NEW NEGRO
Nelse was elated over the defeat and dissolution of the Leagues that had persecuted him with such malignant hatred. When the news of the election came he was still in bed suffering from his wounds. He had received an internal injury that threatened to prove fatal.
"Dar now!" he cried, sitting up in bed, "Ain't I done tole you no kinky-headed niggers gwine ter run dis gov'ment!"
"Keep still dar, ole man, you'll be faintin' ergin," worried Aunt Eve.
"Na honey, I'se feelin' better. Gwine ter git up and meander down town en ax dem niggers how's de Ku Kluxes comin' on dese days."
In spite of all Eye could say he crawled out of bed, fumbled into his clothes and started down town, leaning heavily on his cane. He had gone about a block, when he suddenly reeled and fell. Eve was watching him from the door, and was quickly by his side. He died that afternoon at three o'clock. He regained consciousness before the end and asked Eve for his banjo.
He put it lovingly into the hands of Charlie Gaston who stood by the bed crying.
"You keep 'er, honey. You lub 'er talk better'n any body in de worl', en 'member Nelse when you hear 'er moan en sigh. En when she talk short en sassy en make
Charlie Gaston rode with Aunt Eve to the cemetery. He walked back home through the fields with Dick.
"I wouldn' cry 'bout er ole nigger!" said Dick looking into his reddened eyes.
"Can't help it. He was my best friend."
"Haint I wid you?"
"Yes, but you ain't Nelse."
"Well, I stan' by you des de same."
24.
CHAPTER XXIV
A MODERN MIRACLE
Mrs. Durham, the Doctor wants you," said Charlie when McLeod's footfall had died away.
"Charlie, dear, why don't you call we 'Mama'—surely you love me a little wee bit, don't you?" she asked, taking the boy's hand tenderly in hers.
"Yes'm," he replied hanging his head.
"Then do say Mama. You don't know how good it would be in my ears."
"I try to but it chokes me," he half whispered, glancing timidly up at her. "Let me call you Aunt Margaret, I always wanted an aunt and I think your name Margaret's so sweet," he shyly added.
She kissed him and said, "All right, if that's all you will give me." She passed on into the library where the Preacher waited her.
"My dear, I've just given young McLeod a piece of my mind. I wanted to say to you that you are entirely mistaken in his character. He's a bad egg. I know all the facts about his treachery. He's as smooth a liar as I've met in years."
"With all his brute nature, there's some good in him," she persisted.
"Well, it will stay in him. He will never let it get out."
"All right, have your way about it for the time. We'll
"What is it?"
"Dick."
"What's he done this time?"
"He steals everything he can get his hands on."
"He is a puzzle."
"He's the greatest liar I ever saw," she continued. "He simply will not tell the truth if he can think up a lie in time. I'd say run him off the place, but for Charlie. He seems to love the little scoundrel. I'm afraid his influence over Charlie will be vicious, but it would break the child's heart to drive him away. What shall we do with him?"
The Preacher laughed. "I give it up, my dear, you've got beyond my depth now. I don't know whether he's got a soul. Certainly the very rudimentary foundations of morals seem lacking. I believe you could take a young ape and teach him quicker. I leave him with you. At present it's a domestic problem."
"Thanks, that's so encouraging."
Dick was a puzzle and no mistake about it. But to Charlie his rolling mischievous eyes, his cunning fingers and his wayward imagination were unfailing mountains of life. He found every bird's nest within two miles of town. He could track a rabbit almost as swiftly and surely as a hound. He could work like fury when he had a mind to, and loaf a half day over one row of the garden when he didn't want to work, which was his chronic condition.
When the revival season set in for the negroes in the summer, the days of sorrow began for householders. Every negro in the county became absolutely worthless and remained so until the emotional insanity attending their meetings wore off.
Aunt Mary, Mrs. Durham's cook, got salvation over again every summer with increasing power and increasing degeneration in her work. Some nights she got home at two o'clock and breakfast was not ready until nine. Some nights she didn't get home at all, and Mrs. Durham had to get breakfast herself.
It was a hard time for Dick who had not yet experienced religion, and on whom fell the brunt of the extra work and Mrs. Durham's fretfulness besides.
"I tell you what less do, Charlie!" he cried one day. "Less go down ter dat nigger chu'ch, en bus' up de meetin'! I'se gettin' tired er dis."
"How'll you do it?"
"I show you somefin'?" He reached under his shirt next to his skin, and pulled out Dr. Graham's sun glass.
"Where'd you get that, Dick?"
"Foun' it whar er man lef' it." He walled his eyes solemnly.
"Des watch here when I turns 'im in de sun. I kin set dat pile er straw er fire wid it!"
"You mustn't set the church afire!" warned Charlie.
"Now, chile, but I git up in de gallery, en when ole Uncle Josh gins ter holler en bawl en r'ar en charge, I fling dat blaze er light right on his bal' haid, en I set him afire sho's you bawn!"
"Dick, I wouldn't do, it," said Charlie, laughing in spite of himself.
Charlie refused to accompany him. But Dick's mind was set on the necessity of this work of reform. So in the afternoon he slipped off without leave and quietly made his way into the gallery of the Negro Baptist church.
The excitement was running high. Uncle Josh had preached one sermon an hour in length, and had called up the mourners. At least fifty had come forward. The
This open place was covered with wheat straw to keep the mourners off the bare floor, and afford some sort of comfort for those far advanced in mourning, who went into trances and sometimes lay motionless for hours on their backs or flat on their faces.
The mourners had kicked and shuffled this straw out to the edges and the floor was bare. Uncle Josh had sent two deacons out for more straw.
In the meantime he was working himself up to another mighty climax of exhortation to move sinners to come forward.
"Come on ter glory you po, po sinners, en flee ter de Lamb er God befo de flames er hell swaller you whole! At de last great day de Sperit 'll flash de light er his shinin' face on dis ole parch up sinful worl', en hit 'll ketch er fire in er minute, an de yearth 'll melt wid furvient heat! Whar 'll you be when den po tremblin' sinner? Whar 'll you be when de flame er de Sperit de smites de moon and de stars wid fire, en dey gin ter drap outten de sky en knock big holes in de burnin' yearth? Whar 'll you be when de rocks melt wit dat heat, en de sun hide his face in de black smoke dat rise fum de pit?"
Moans and groans and shrieks, louder and louder filled the air. Uncle Josh paused a moment and looked for his deacons with the straw. They were just coming up the steps with a great armful over their heads.
"What's de mattter wid you breddern! Fetch on dat wheat straw! Here's dese tremblin' souls gwine down inter de dames er hell des fur de lak er wheat straw!"
The brethren hurried forward with the wheat straw, and just as they reached Uncle Josh standing perspiring
"God-der-mighty! What's dat?"
The brethren holding the straw saw it and stood dumb with terror. The light disappeared from Uncle Josh's head and lit the straw in splendour on one of the deacon's shoulders. Aunt Mary's voice was heard above the mourners' din, clear, shrill and soul piercing.
"G-l-o-r-y! G-1-o-r-y ter God! De flame er de Sperit! De judgment day! Yas Lawd, I'se here! Glory! Halleluyah!"
Suddenly the straw an the deacon's back burst into flames! And pandemonium broke loose. A weak-minded sinner screamed,
"De flames er Hell!"
The mourners smelled the smoke and sprang from the door with white staring eyes. When they saw the fire and got their bearings they made for the open,—they jumped on each others' back and made for the door like madmen. Those nearest the windows sprang through, and when the lower part of the window was jammed, big buck negroes jumped on the backs of the lower crowd and plunged through the two upper sashes with a crash that added new terror to the panic.
In two minutes the church was empty, and the yard full of crazy, shouting negroes.
Dick stepped from the gallery into the crowd as the last ones emerged, ran up to the pulpit and
"Now dog-gone 'em let 'em yell!" he muttered to himself.
When Uncle Josh sufficiently recovered his senses to think, and saw the church still standing, with not even a whiff of smoke to be seen, instead of the roaring furnace he had expected, he was amazed. He called his scattered deacons together and they went cautiously back to investigate.
"Hit's no use in talkin' Bre'r Josh, dey sho wuz er fire!" cried one of the deacons.
"Sho's de Lawd's in heaben. I feel it gittin' on my fingers fo' I drap dat straw!" said another.
"Hit smite me fust right top er my haid!" whispered Uncle Josh in awe.
They cautiously approached the pulpit and there in front of it lay the charred fragments of the burned straw pile.
They gathered around it in awe-struck wonder. One of them touched it with his foot.
"Doan do dat!" cried Uncle Josh, lifting his hand with authority.
They drew back, Uncle Josh saw the immense power in that heap of charred straw. Some of it was a little damp and it had been only partly burned.
"Dar's de mericle er de Sperit!" he solemnly declared.
"Yas Lawd!" echoed a deacon.
"Fetch de hammer, en de saw, a de nails; an de boards en build right dar en altar ter de Sperit!" were his prophetic commands.
And they did. They got an old show case of glass,
Then a revival broke out that completely paralysed the industries of Campbell county. Every negro stopped work and went to that church. Uncle Josh didn't have to preach or to plead. They come in troops towards the magic altar, whose fame and mystery had thrilled every superstitious soul with its power. The benches were all moved out and the whole church floor given up to mourners. Uncle Josh had an easy time walking around just adding a few terrifying hints to trembling sinners, or helping to hold some strong sister when she had "come through," with so much glory in her bones that there was danger she would hurt somebody.
After a week the matter became so serious the white people set in motion an investigation of the affair. Dick had thrown out a mysterious hint that he knew some things that were very funny.
"Doan you tell nobody!" he would solemnly say to Charlie.
And then he would lie down on the grass and roll and laugh. At length by dint of perseverance, and a bribe of a quarter, the Preacher induced Dick to explain the mystery. He did, and it broke up the meeting.
Uncle Josh's fury knew no bounds. He was heart-broken at the sudden collapse of his revival, chagrined at the recollection of his own terror at the fire, and fearful of an avalanche of backsliders from the meeting among those who had professed even with the greatest glory.
He demanded that the Preacher should turn Dick over to him for correction. The Preacher took a few hours to consider whether he should whip him himself or turn him over to Uncle Josh. Dick heard Uncle Josh's demand. Out behind the stable he and Charlie held a council of war.
"You go see Miss Mar'get fur me, en git up close to her, en tell her taint right ter 'low no low down black nigger ter whip me!"
"All right Dick, I will," agreed Charlie.
"Case ef ole Josh beats me I gwine ter run away. I nebber git ober dat."
Dick had threatened to run away often before when he wanted to force Charlie to do something for him. Once he had gone a mile out of town with his clothes tied in a bundle, and Charlie trudging after him begging him not to leave.
The boy did his best to save Dick the humiliation of a whipping at the hands of Uncle Josh, but in vain.
When Uncle Josh led him out to the stable lot, his face was not pleasant to look upon. There was a dangerous gleam in Dick's eye that boded no good to his enemy.
"You imp er de debbil!" exclaimed Uncle Josh shaking his switch with unction.
"I fool you good enough, you ole bal' headed ape!" answered Dick gritting his teeth defiantly.
"I make you sing enudder chune fo I'se done wid you."
"En if you does, nigger, you know what I gwine do fur you?" cried Dick rolling his eyes up at his enemy.
"What kin you do, honey?" asked Uncle Josh, humouring his victim with the evident relish of a cat before his meal on a mouse.
"Ef you hits me hard, I gwine ter burn you house down on you haid some night, en run erway des es sho es I kin stick er match to it," said Dick.
"You is, is you?" thundered Josh with wrath.
"Dat I is. En I burn yo ole chu'ch de same night."
Uncle Josh was silent a moment. Dick's words had chilled his heart. He was afraid of him, but he was
That night Dick disappeared from Hambright, and for weeks every evening at dusk the wistful face of Charlie Gaston could be seen on the big hill to the south of town vainly watching for somebody. He would always take something to eat in his pockets, and when he gave up his vigil he would place the food under a big shelving rock where they had often played together. But the birds and ground squirrels ate it. He would slip back the next day hoping to see Dick jump out of the cave and surprise him.
And then at last he gave it up, sat down under the rock and cried. He knew Dick would grow to be a man somewhere out in the big world and never come back.
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