169. CLXIX.
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
Post Offis, Confedrit × Roads }
(wich is in the Stait uv Kentucky),
November 5, 1868.
Bad news travels fast. We hev heerd from enuff uv the
States to know that the butcher Grant — he wich wunst afore
stood in the way uv the Confedracy — hez been elected President,
and that Seymore and Blare, our gellorious standard-bearers,
hev bin defeeted ignominously.
This ends it! This finishes it! There iz no longer hope
for Democrisy. Our star is sot in gloom. Never shel I forgit
the gastly appearance uv Deekin Pogram's face ez the fatal
nooze wuz told him. A single tear rolled from his left eye,
down his furrowed cheek; it glittered for a brief moment on
the tip uv his brillyent nose, and plunged off into space!
How like our hopes! Never a word sed he, but sadly beckoned
me to foller. Sadly he walked to the square, mournfully he
pulled down the Confedrit flag which hez waved from the pole
in front of Bascom's, tenderly he folded it, and placed it under
the barl uv whisky in the bar. “Thar let it rest,” gasped he
in a husky tone; “it will never kiss the breezes no more.”
And overcome with emoshun, the good old man busted in a
flood uv tears, wich saved his life. The drain uv moisture
from his system made it necessary for him to take suthin to
fill its plase, and that suthin wuz strengthnin. To save him I
took suthin strengthnin too.
I won't say a word ez to the causes uv this most terrible
defeat. Seymore wood make speeches, wich hez alluz bin fatle
to Presidenshul aspirants, and Blare wood rite terrible letters,
wich is just ez bad. Besides, Blare fairly represents us, wich
druv off all the decent people, and Seymore ruther prides hisself
on bein a gentleman, wich chilled the ardor of our party.
The nominashuns were unforchnit, but I don't reproach em.
It's fate.
I hev reason to sigh. For Pollock will git the Post Offis
after all. Tho hiz hands are contaminated by bein taken into
the hands uv niggers, — his hands wich handles kaliker and
draws molasses, and iz consekently degraded by earnin his own
livin, — his hands will pass out to Deekin Pogram the paper
wich the Corners takes! The Deekin, ez he thot uv this, bust
into teers agin. “I shel stop that paper,” sez he, “and the
Corners shel go back into the darkness uv ignerance. I shell
never go agin for a letter, nor will I hev one written for me
to any body. When a Ablishn face is at the general delivery
I shel stop paternizen the Post Offis!”
Will the new Administrashun deprive a whole community
uv a paper merely to give one uv its supporters a posishun?
We shel see.
But I cood endoor the loss uv my posishen; for principle
I kin look marterdom squarely in the face; but I see other
and more terrible results followin this catastrophe.
Wat uv the niggers? Wat uv us. We shel hev niggers
votin at the Corners! We shel hev, at our poles, all uv the
black cusses who live between here and Garretstown, a votin
ez regler ez though they wuz white men. We shel hev em
defilin the sakred ballot-box ez tho they wuz not uv a cussid
race. I see dark lines afore our poor State. They will hereafter
hold the land wich they hev bought, and wich they live
on, by a sure tenure, and they will increase and multiply.
Pollock will buy ther prodoos, and they will work and git
money. This money they will lend to us, — for we must hev it
to sustain life, — and they will take mortgages onto our land.
(When I say our, I mean Deekin Pogram and sich.) Ez we
never work ourselves, and will not hev, under the present
arrangement, the means of compellin the labor necessary to
our support, we kin never pay; and the result will be, this
beautiful land uv ourn wich we so deeply love, will pass out
uv the hands uv the stronger and better race into the control
uv a weaker and less powerful people. The Deekin was remarkin
suthin to this effect, when Joe Bigler remarkt in reply,
that the Deekin hed better throw himself onto the sympathy
uv his sons.
“Why, they can't work any more than I kin,” sed the
Deekin.
“I don't mean yoor white sons!” sed this terrible Bigler.
“
They ain't uv no akkount. But in the nigger settlement at
Garrettstown yoo hev more than twenty who wood —”
The poor Deekin rushed out uv the room, while Bigler laft
his most feendish laff.
The people will be deprived uv their innocent amoosements.
This Grant will send on armed hirelins, clothed in ojus bloo,
with muskets and sich, who will prevent our shootin niggers,
and who will protect on ther farms and in ther houses the ojus
Northerners who hev settled in our midst. We shel see the
glorious Southern system decline stidily and shoorly. The
whipping posts will rot and the stox will decay; the yelp uv
dorgs will no more be heard, and the cheerful crack uv the
pistol and the shreek uv the man wat has got his gruel will no
more be heerd in the land. Bascom, after he hez the few
farms still unmortgaged in the visinity, will close, and go to
Looisville and embark into the wholesale grosery trade and jine
the church, and give librerly to Sunday skools; his grosery
will fall into dekay, and the sine will hang by one hinge. We
shell see churches and skool houses, factrys and villages everywhere.
The Pogram place uv 2,000 akers will be divided up
into twenty farms, and onto them will be the bustlin Noo
Yorker, the cool, calculating Yankee, the stiddy, hard-workin
German, who will display his grovelin nacher by working
himself instid uv forcin niggers to do it for him. We shel be
run over with skool-marms, deluged with acadamies, plastered
over with noosepapers, stunned with machinery, drove crazy
by the whirr, crash, and clash of mowin machines and reapers.
And there will be cheese made at the Corners. Pennibacker's
distillery will be turned into a cheese factry, and weak whey
will run wher now the generous high wines flash along the
troughs. Ther will be no rectifyin at the Corners; the hog
pens will be abolished, and in ther sted will be skool houses.
And methinks I see in my mind's eye, Horasho, the speerit, the
ghost uv the departed Pogram (for he won't survive it long),
a hoverin over the scene, ez Hamlick's father did. The blessed
shade will look in vain for his house — on the spot wher it
stood will be an academy. He will turn to Bascom's, but ther
he will find a deestrict skule.
“To Pennibacker's!” he will gasp, in a speerit whisper, and
with a speritooal smack uv his speritooal lips he will hover
over it, but the smell uv cheese in the place uv the strengthenin
odors in wich he delites, will send a speritooal shudder thro
him. A ghost uv a tear will run down his speritooal nose,
linger for a minit at the tip, like a dew drop on the rose, and
fall!
Then will the dissatisfied ghost demand to be taken back to
purgatory, a place less tyrin to his nerves.
All is up with me and us. I shel stay in Kentucky for the
present, tho wat may become uv me the Lord only knows.
Petroleum V. Nasby, P. M.
(wich is Postmaster).
