“For several years since the nineties it has been my privilege to serve a large charitable institution here,” a Southern friend writes me from a Northern city. “On the Fourth of July I join with as much fervor as anybody in the flag salute, in singing ‘America’ and all the other patriotic songs, until they come to ‘Marching Through Georgia.’ That takes the very heart out of me! Sometimes it is all I can do to keep from bursting into tears! Then again I feel as if I must stand up and shout: ‘We should not teach any American child to sing that song!’ You know the home of one of my dearest friends was in the way of that march; it was burned to the ground and she, a little girl, and her aged grandfather wandered homeless in the night. I wonder, O, I wonder, if our soldiers in the Philippines,Northern and Southern boys, are giving grounds for any such songs as that! I’d rather we’d lose the fight!”
A cause operating against education of both races remains to be cited. The carpet-bag, scalawag and negroid State Governments made raids on educational funds. In North Carolina, $420,000 in railroad stock belonging to the Educational Fund for the Benefit of Poor Children were sold for $158,000, to be applied in part payment of extended per diems of legislators. These legislators gave at State expense lavish entertainments, and kept a bar and house of prostitution in the Capitol; took trips to New York and gambled away State funds by thousands; war had left a school fund, taxation increased it; but for two years no child, white or black, received benefits. There was money enough for the Governor to raise and equip two regiments, one of negroes, for intimidation of whites, but none for education. Of Georgia’s public school fund of $327,000, there seems not to have been a penny left to the State when her million-dollar legislature adjourned in 1870.
Louisiana’s permanent school fund for parishes vanished with none to tell where it went. Attention was called to its disappearance by W. E. Brown, the negro State Superintendent of Education. When Warmouth, was inaugurated (1868), the treasury held $1,300,500 for free schools. “Bonds representing this,” states Hon. B. F. Sage, “the most sacred property of the State, were publicly auctioned June, 1872, to pay warrants issued by Warmouth.” Warmouth, like Holden of North Carolina, and Scott and Moses of South Carolina, raised and maintained at State expense a black army. In 1870, the Radical Governor of Florida made desperate efforts to lay hands on the Agricultural LandScrip, property of the Agricultural College of that State; to save it from his clutches C. T. Chase, President of Public Instruction, asked President Grant’s intervention. A forger, embezzler and thief presided over Mississippi’s Department of Education. In every State it was the same story of public moneys wasted by nefarious tricksters who had ridden to power on the negro ballot; the widow and the orphan robbed, the gray-beard and the child; the black man and the white.
SCHOOLMARMS AND OTHERS
Schoolmarms and Other Newcomers
Many good people came down to do good to us and the negroes; we were not always so nice to these as we ought to have been. But very good people can try other very good people sorely sometimes. Besides, some who came in sheep’s clothing were not sheep, and gave false ideas of the entire flock.
Terms of professional philanthropy were strange in the Southerner’s mouth. It never occurred to the men, women and maidens who visited all the poor, sick, old and feeble negroes in their reach, breaking their night’s rest or their hours of recreation or toil without a sense of sacrifice—who gave medicines, food, clothing, any and everything asked for to the blacks and who ministered to them in neighbourly ways innumerable—that they were doing the work of a district or parish visitor. Southerners have been doing these things as a matter of course ever since the negroes were brought to them direct from Africa or by way of New England, making no account of it, never organizing into charitable associations and taking on corresponding tags, raising collections and getting pay for official services; the help a Southerner gave a darkey he took out of his own pocket or larder or off his own back; and that ended the matter till next time.
Yet, here come salaried Northerners with “Educator,” “Missionary,” or “Philanthropist” marked on their brows, broidered on their sleeves; and as far as credit for work for darkeys goes, “taking the cake”from the Southerner, who had no warm welcome for the avalanche of instructors pouring down upon him with the “I am holier than thou” expression, and bent as much upon teaching him what he ought to have been doing as upon teaching the negro to struggle indecorously for the semblance of a non-existent equality.
Newcomers were upon us like the plagues of Egypt. Deserters from the Federal Army, men dismissed for cause, followers in its wake, political gypsies, bums and toughs. Everybody in New York remarked upon the thinning out of the Bowery and its growing orderliness during enlistments for the Spanish-American War; and everybody knew what became of vanishing trampdom; it joined the army. The Federal Army in the sixties was not without heavy percentage of similar element; and, when, after conquest, it returned North, it left behind much riff-raff. Riff-raffs became politicians and intellectual and spiritual guides to the negroes. From these, and from early, unwise, sometimes vicious Freedmen’s Bureau instructors, Southerners got first ideas of Yankee schoolmasters and schoolmarms.
“Yankee schoolmarms” overran the country. Their spirit was often noble and high as far as the black man’s elevation—or their idea of it—was concerned; but towards the white South, it was bitter, judicial, unrelenting. Some were saints seeking martyrdom, and finding it; some were fools; some, incendiaries; some, all three rolled into one; some were straight-out business women seeking good-paying jobs; some were educational sharps.
Into the Watkins neighbourhood came three teachers, a male preacher and two women teachers. They went in among the negroes, ate and slept with them, paraded the streets arm-in-arm with them. They were disturbed to perceive that, even among negroes, the familiaritythat breeds contempt is not conducive to usefulness; and that they were at a disadvantage in the eyes of the negroes because white people failed to recognise them.
Mr. Watkins, master of the manor, was a shining light to all who knew him. In summer his verandah, in winter his dining-room, was crowded Sunday afternoons with negroes on his invitation: “I will be glad to have you come to sing and pray with me.” He would read a chapter from the Bible, lead the opening prayer, then call upon some sable saint to lead, himself responding with humble “Amens.” White and black would sing together. When the newcomers found how things were, they felt aggrieved that they had not his countenance.
He had seen one of them walk up to his ex-hostler and lay her hand on his coat-collar, while she talked away archly to him. I hardly believe a gentleman of New York, Boston or Chicago would conclude that persons making intimates of his domestic force could desire association with his wife and daughters or expect social attentions from them; I hardly believe he would urge the ladies of his family to call upon these persons. Mr. Watkins did not send his women-kind to see the newcomers; at last, the newcomers took the initiative and came to see his family. His daughters did not appear, but Mrs. Watkins received them politely. They went straight to the point, lodging complaint against the community.
“We had no reason to suppose,” said she, quietly, “that you cared for the coöperation of our white people. You acted independently of us; you did not advise with us or show desire for affiliation. We would have been forcing ourselves upon you. I will be as frank as you have been. Had you started this work in a proper spirit and manner, my husband for one would haveresponded to the limit of his power to any call you made upon him.”
They dragged in the social equality business and found her adamant. When they charged “race prejudice,” she said promptly: “Were I to visit relatives in Boston, the nice people there would, I doubt not, show me pleasant attentions. Were I to put myself on equal terms with their domestics, I could hardly expect it. The question is not altogether one of race prejudice, but of fitness of things.” “But we are missionaries, not social visitors.” “We do not feel that you benefit negroes by teaching them presumption and to despise and neglect work and to distrust and hate us.”
A garrulous negress was entertaining one of these women with hair-raising accounts of cruelties practiced upon her by whites when, as a slave, she cooked for them. The schoolmarm asked: “Why didn’t you black people poison all the whites and get your freedom that way? You’re the most patient people on earth or you would have done so.” A “mammy” who overheard administered a stinging rebuke: “Dat would ha’ been a sin even ef our white folks wuz ez mean ez Sukey Ann been tellin’. Mine wuz good tuh me. Sukey Ann jes been tellin’ you dem tales tuh see how she kin wuk you up.” Perhaps the school-teacher had not meant to be taken more literally than Sukey Ann deserved to be.
Until freedom, white and black children could hardly be kept apart. Boys ran off fishing and rabbit-hunting together; girls played dolls in the garret of the great house or in a sunny corner of the woodpile. They rarely quarrelled. The black’s adoration of the white, the white’s desire to be allowed to play with the black, stood in the way of conflict. An early result of the social equality doctrine was war between children ofthe races. Such strife was confined almost wholly to white and black schools in towns, where black and white children were soon ready to “rock” each other. A spirit of dislike and opposition to blacks, which their elders could hardly understand, having never experienced it, began to take possession of white children. The following story will give some idea of these dawning manifestations of race prejudice:
Negro and white schools were on opposite sides of the street in Petersburg, the former a Freedmen’s Bureau institution, the latter a private school taught by a very youthful ex-Confederate, Captain M., who, though he looked like a boy himself, had made, after a brilliant university course, a shining war record. The negro boys, stimulated by the example of their elders who were pushing whites off the sidewalks, and excited by ill-timed discourses by their imported white pedagogue, “sassed” the white boys, contended with them for territory, or aggravated them in some way. A battle ensued, in which the white children ran the black off the street and into their own schoolhouse, the windows of which were damaged by rocks, the only serious mischief resulting from exchange of projectiles.
In short order six Federal soldiers with bayonets fixed marched into the white schoolhouse, where the Captain was presiding over his classes, brought by this time to a proper sense of penitence and due state of order, their preceptor being a military disciplinarian. The invading squad came to capture the children. The Captain indignantly protested, saying he was responsible for his boys; it was sufficient to serve warrant on him, he would answer for them; it was best not to make a mountain out of a mole-hill and convulse the town with a children’s quarrel. The sergeant paid him scant courtesy and arrested the children. The Captain donnedhis old Confederate overcoat, than which he had no other, and marched down the street with his boys to the Provost’s office.
The Provost, a soldier and a gentleman, after examining into the case and considering the small culprits, all ranged in a terrified row and not knowing but that they would be blown next moment into Paradise or the other place, asked the Captain if he would guarantee that his children would keep the peace. The Captain assured him that he could and would if the teacher of the coloured boys would keep his charges in bounds, adding that he would have the windows repaired at his expense. The Provost accepted this pledge, and with a withering look at the pedagogic complainant, said to the arresting officer: “Sergeant, I am sorry it was necessary to send six armed men to arrest these little boys.” This happened at ten o’clock in the morning. Before ten that night the Provost was removed by orders from Washington. So promptly had complaint been entered against him that he was too lenient to whites, so quickly had it taken effect! Yet his course was far more conservative of the public peace than would have been the court-martialing of the children of prominent citizens of the town, and the stirring-up of white and black parents against each other.
“It’s no harm for a hungry coloured man to make a raid on a chicken-coop or corn-pile,” thus spoke Carpet-Bagger Crockett in King William County, Virginia, June, 1869, in the Walker-Wells campaign, at a meeting opened with prayer by Rev. Mr. Collins, Northern missionary. Like sentiment was pronounced in almost the same words by a carpet-bag officer of state, a loud advocate of negro education, from the steps of the State House in Florida. Like sentiment was taughtin direct and indirect ways by no small number of preceptors in negro schoolhouses.
A South Carolina schoolmarm, after teaching her term out at a fat salary, made of her farewell a “celebration” with songs, recitations, etc.; the scholars passed in procession before the platform, she kissed each, and to each handed a photograph of herself for $1. She carried off a harvest. Various other small ways of levying tribute were practiced by the thoughtless or the unscrupulous; and negroes pilfered to meet demands. Schoolmarms and masters did not always teach for sweet charity’s sake. With moving stories some drew heavily upon the purse of the generous North for contributions which were not exactly applied to the negro’s relief or profit. In order to attract Northern teachers to Freedmen’s schools in Mississippi salaries were paid out of all proportion to their services or to the people’s ability to pay. “Examinations for teachers’ licenses were not such as to ascertain the real fitness of applicants or conduce to a high standard of scholarship,” says James Wilford Garner in “Reconstruction in Mississippi.” “They were asked a few oral questions by the superintendent in his private office and the certificate granted as a matter of course.”
“While the average pay of the teachers in Northern schools is less than $300 a year, salaries here range from $720 to $1,920,” said Governor Alcorn to the Mississippi Legislature in 1871. The old log schoolhouses were torn down by the reconstructionists, new and costly frame and brick ones built; and elegant desks and handsome chairs, “better suited to the academy than the common school,” displaced equipments that had been good enough for many a great American’s intellectual start in life. In Monroe County, schoolhouses which citizens offered free of charge were rejected and newones built; teachers’ salaries ranged from $50 to $150 a month; schools were multiplied; heavy special taxes were levied. In Lowndes, a special tax of $95,000 over and above the regular tax for education was levied. Taxpayers protested in formal meetings. The Ku Klux whipped several male teachers, one an ex-Confederate, and warned a schoolmarm or two to leave. Expenses came down.
What was true of one Southern State was true of others where costly educational machinery and a peculative system covering “deals” and “jobs” in books, furniture, schoolhouse construction, etc., were imposed. Whippings with which Ku Klux visited a few male teachers and school directors here and there, and warnings to leave served upon others of both sexes, were, in most cases, protests—and the only effective protests impoverished and tax-ridden communities could make—against waste of public funds, peculation, subordination of the teacher’s office to that of political emissary, Loyal League organizer, inculcator of social equality doctrines and race hatred. Some whippings were richly deserved by those who got them, some were not; some which were richly deserved were never given. It was not always Ku Klux that gave the whippings, but their foes, footing up sins to their account. It became customary for white communities to assemble and condemn violence, begging their own people to have no part in it.
I have known many instances where Southern clergy maintained friendly relations with schoolmarms, aiding them, operating with them, lending them sympathy, thinking their methods often wrong, but accepting their earnestness and devotion and sacrifice at its full value. I have heard Southerners speak of faculties of certain institutions thus: “Those teachers came down here in the spirit that missionaries go to a foreign land, expectingpersecution and ostracism, and prepared to bear it.” I have deeply respected the lovely and exalted character of some schoolmarms I have personally known, who suffered keenly the isolation and loneliness of their position; to missionaries and teachers of this type, I have seen the Southern attitude change as their quality was learned. I have seen municipal boards helping with appropriations Northern workers among negroes, while these workers were ungraciously charging them with race prejudice. And I have seen the attitude of such workers gradually change towards their white neighbours as they understood our white and black people better.
Early experiments must have sometimes perplexed the workers. Negroes had confused ideas of education. Thus, a negress who did not know the English alphabet, went to a teacher in Savannah and demanded to be taught French right off. Others simply demanded “to know how to play de pianner.” The mass were eager for “book-learnin’.” Southerners who had been trying to instruct indifferent little negroes beheld with curiosity this sudden and intense yearning when “education” was held up as a forbidden fruit of the past.
It has been said that Southern whites would not at first teach in the negro schools. “Rebels” were not invited and would not have been allowed to teach in Bureau schools. Reconstructionists preferred naturally their own ilk. Certainly all Southerners were not opposedper seto negro schools, for we find some so influential as the Bishop of Mississippi advising planters in 1866 to open schools for their negroes. Leading journals and some teachers’ conventions in 1867 advocated public schools for negroes, with Southern whites as teachers. It has been said, too, that Northern teachers who came to teach the negroes could not secure board in respectable white families, and, therefore, hadno choice but to board in black. I think this may be wholly true. The Southerner firmly believed that the education given the negro was not best for him or the country; and he was deeply prejudiced against the Northern teacher and all his or her ways. The efforts of Black and Tan assemblies to force mixed schools upon the country was a ground of prejudice against teachers and the schools; so, too, the course of some teachers in trying to compel this.
How could rational people, with the common welfare at heart, advocate mixed schools when such feelings were in evidence at outset as the captain and the pedagogue incident and many similar ones in many States proved existent? Such feelings were not and are not limited to the South. Only a year or two ago the mixed school question caused negroes to burn a schoolhouse near Boston. Many white and black educators at the North seem to agree that it is not best to mix the races there. Prominent negroes are now asserting that it is not best for the negro child to put him in schools with whites; he is cowed as before a superior or he exhibits or excites antipathy. Besides, he casts a reflection upon his own race in insisting upon this association.
If white Southerners at first objected to teaching negroes, this objection speedily vanished before the argument: “We should teach the negroes ourselves if we do not wish them influenced against us by Yankees,” and, “We should keep the money at home,” and the all-compelling “I must make a living.” As the carpet-bag governments went out of power, Northern schoolteachers lost their jobs and Southern ones got them. As negroes were prepared, Southern whites appointed negroes to teach negroes, which was what the blacks themselves desired and believed just.
School fights between the races ceased as Southernwhites or Southern negroes came in charge of schools for blacks, and as Northern people who came South to work in charitable enterprises understood conditions better. Those who had unwittingly wrought ill in the first place had usually meant well. The missionary of the sixties and seventies was not as wise as the missionary of today, who knows that he must study a people before he undertakes to teach and reform them, and that it is all in the day’s work for him not to run counter heedlessly to established social usages or to try to uproot instantly and with violence customs centuries old. A reckless reformer may tear up more good things in a few weeks than he can replant, or substitute with better, in a lifetime.
THE CARPET-BAGGER
The Carpet-Bagger
The test-oath was invitation to the carpet-bagger. The statements of Generals Schofield and Stoneman show how difficult it was to find in the South men capable of filling office who could swear they had “never given aid or comfort” to a Confederate. Few or no decent people could do it. In the summer of 1865, President Johnson instructed provisional governors to fill Federal offices of mail, revenue and customs service with men from other States, if proper resident citizens—that is, men who could take the test-oath—could not be found. Office-seekers from afar swarmed as bees to a hive.
The carpet-bagger was the all-important figure in Dixie after the war; he was lord of our domain; he bred discord between races, kept up war between sections, created riots and published the tale of them, laying all blame on whites. Neither he nor his running mate the scalawag or turn-coat Southerner, was received socially. Sentence fell harder upon the latter when old friends insulted him and the speaker on the hustings could say of him no word too bitter. His family suffered with him. The wife of the native Radical Governor of one Southern State said when her punishment was over: “The saddest years of my life were spent in the Executive Mansion. In a city where I had been beloved, none of my old friends, none of the best people, called on me.” In times of great poverty, temptations were great; men, after once starting in politics, were drawn further than they had dreamed possible. Again,men with State welfare at heart, urged compromises as the only way to secure benefits to the State; on being irritated, urged unwisely; on being ostracized, out-Heroded Herod. Our foreign office-holders were not all bad men or corrupt. We will not call these carpet-baggers. The carpet-bagger has been defined: “A Yankee, in a linen duster and with a carpet-bag, appearing suddenly on a political platform in the South, and calling upon the negroes to vote him into office.” I give portraits of two types.
In the wake of Sherman’s Army which passed through Brunswick, Virginia, toward Washington, came and stopped two white men, Lewis and McGiffen. They were desperadoes and outlaws, carried Winchester rifles and were fine shots; said they hailed from Maine; to intimates, the leader, Lewis, boasted that he had killed his step-father and escaped the hangman by playing crazy. They leased the farm of a “poor white,” Mrs. Parrish. Lewis opened a negro school and a bank, issuing script for sums from twenty-five cents to five dollars; he organized a Loyal League, collecting the fees and dues therefrom. He armed and drilled negroes and marched them around to the alarm of the people. Court House records show lawful efforts of whites at self-protection. August 8, 1868, Lewis was tried before William Lett, J. P., for inciting negroes to insurrection, when, under pretense of preaching the Gospel to them, he convened them at Parrish’s. He was sentenced to the penitentiary for seven years. The State was under military rule, and the decision of the civil court was set aside and Lewis left at large. John Drummond was a witness against Lewis.
Lewis soon had the negroes well organised; he established a system of signal stations from the North Carolina line to Nottoway and Dinwiddie. By the firing ofsignal guns, they would receive notice to congregate. Suddenly, all hands on a man’s plantation would stop work and say: “Got orders, suh, tuh go tuh de Cote House.” And all at once roads would be lined with negroes from every direction bound for the Court House. In a few hours the little town would fill with darkeys, a thousand or more on the streets. They would collect thus from time to time, and hold secret or public political meetings, Lewis, McGiffen and other speakers working them up to a state of great excitement.
At one meeting, a riot occurred in which several men were killed or wounded. Mr. Freeman Jones, later Sheriff of the County, gave me a version of it. He said: “Meade Bernard (afterwards Judge Bernard) and Sidney Jones were set upon. Negroes knocked the last-named gentleman senseless, continuing chastisement until he was rescued by the Freedmen’s Bureau officer. When Bernard was attacked, his old coloured nurse, Aunt Sally Bland, rushed into the melée, crying: ‘Save my chile! save my chile!’ Sticks were raining blows on his head when she interfered, pleading with them to desist until they stopped. These white men had shown all their lives, only kindness to negroes. When set upon they were doing nothing to give offense, they were simply listening to the speeches. One negro, observing their presence, cried out: ‘Kill the d—d white scoundrels!’ Others took up the cry.
“The whites, a little handful, retreated towards the village, followed by at least a thousand negroes, yelling intention to sack and fire the town. The road passed through a very narrow lane into Main Street. Here they were blocked and confronted by Mr. L. G. Wall, carrier of the United States Mail, who, as a Government official, halted them, telling them he had right of way and that they were obstructing Government service;he ordered them to move back and make room; they would not; he drew his pistol and fired five or six times. I believe every shot took effect. Several negroes were desperately wounded. The mob retired and Wall went on. In the suburbs the negroes held an angry meeting, but they had got enough of mob violence.” Which was fortunate. The normal white male population of the village did not exceed forty or fifty. White men went to the polls soon after not knowing what to expect, and found everything quiet. Negroes had come, voted early and gone. They had learned a salutary lesson.
Lewis claimed to be an officer duly commissioned, and went about making arrests, selecting some prominent men. One of his victims was William Lett, an old and wealthy citizen, and the justice before whom Lewis had been brought to trial. A complaint by Mr. Lett’s cook was the ostensible ground of Lewis’ call upon Mr. Lett; the real purpose was robbery. The outlaws had seduced into their service John Parrish, an unlettered boy who liked to hunt with them, and who, boy-like, was pleased with their daredevil ways. He composed the third in the “team” that went around arresting people. He recently gave me the next chapter in the Lewis story.
“I was jes a little boy an’ I done what I was ordered to. I was goin’ out sqir’l huntin’, an’ I see Dr. Lewis, an’ he had a paper in his han’, an’ he say: ‘Johnny, I want you to go with me this evenin’.’ I says: ‘I wants to go squir’l huntin’.’ He says: ‘I summons you to go wid me to serve a warrant on Mr. Lett.’ An’ I lef’ my dawgs at my sister’s an’ I taken my little dollar-an’-a-half gun along. He says: ‘Johnny, people tell me this ole man is mighty hot-headed. If he comes out of his house an’ I tell you to shoot, shoot.’ Dr. Lewis called Mr. Lett out to de gate, an’ read dewarrant to him. An’ Mr. Lett said he wouldn’ be arrested by him, an’ Dr. Lewis grabbed at his coat collar, an’ Mr. Lett broke loose, an’ hollered for somebody to han’ him his gun outer de house. An’ he went into de house an’ got a gun an’ shot Lewis, an’ Lewis stepped behin’ de gate-pos’, an’ he called to me: ‘D— him! where is he?’ An’ I said: ‘Jes behin’ de winder.’ An’ I stepped behin’ de corner, an’ Dr. Lewis called me, an’ I stepped out, an’ I thought I see a gun or pistol pointin’ my way f’om de winder, an’ I thought I heard Lewis say ‘Shoot!’ an’ I shot. It warn’t nothin’ but a little bitter dollar-an’-a-half bird gun. But dem shot went through de weather-bo’din’. I heard Mr. Lett’s gun when it fell an’ I heard him when he fell. Lewis was standin’ behin’ de gate-pos’. The cook-woman hollered: ‘Here he is! here he is, going out at de back door!’ And thar was a little chicken-house. An’ Lett shot Lewis with bird-shot.”
Mr. Freeman Jones summed it up simply thus: “When the gang came to capture Mr. Lett, the old man attempted a defense, ordering them off his place, and barricading himself behind the nearest thing at hand, which happened to be a chicken-coop. Lewis shot and nearly killed him; the old man lingered some time between life and death.” Mr. Lett, it seems, was shot by both. “They toted Lewis away,” concludes Parrish, “to de house of a feller named Carroll, an’ he stayed thar. They sent for de military soldiers an’ they came, an’ I stated de case well as I could, an’ they discharged me.” Lewis was tried in the civil court, sentenced to a term in the penitentiary, was carried by the sheriff to that institution and pardoned next day by Governor Wells, military appointee of General Schofield; he got back to the county almost as soon as the sheriff.
The people became more and more incensed at repeated outrages. Dr. Powell, whose assassination was attempted, tells me that the immediate cause of the final tragedies was that Lewis ordered Carroll to leave home. John B. Drummond, volunteering, was appointed special constable to arrest Lewis. He met Lewis and his gang in a turn of the road and halted them, telling Lewis he had a warrant for him. Lewis fired, killing him instantly. The temper of the public was now such that Lewis and McGiffen fled the State, enticing Parrish along. They sought asylum in North Carolina and sent Parrish back for some property. A reward was offered for them. In a little one-horse wagon which Parrish brought with Lewis’ pony, they travelled by night to Charleston, South Carolina. Here Lewis opened a school and Parrish hired himself out. They staid there two years. McGiffen married again. He had taken his little child from his Brunswick wife; now he concluded to carry it back to her.
“I went with him,” says Parrish. “We come near a village an’ we stopped at a man’s house. He mistrusted something wrong.” (Naturally! Dr. Powell says he saw his guests moulding bullets, ordered them out, and they defied him, declaring they would spend the night.) “He sent out an’ got two men an’ they come in thar wid thar guns an’ staid all night. When we got up in de little town nex’ mornin’, thar come out twenty men wid guns in thar han’s, an’ de Mayor he was thar, an’ McGiffen tole ’em to stop; an’ they stopped. He tole ’em thar couldn’ but one or two come near. They suspicioned about our having the little chile along. You see, thar was trouble ’bout dat time ’bout children bein’ kidnapped an’ carried off to de Dismal Swamp. I see ten or thirteen men on de railroad, an’ they comin’ pretty close. McGiffen hollered out for’em to stop, or he would certainly shoot. An’ they stopped. Then somebody hollered ‘Close up!’
“I had de little boy in my lap. To keep him f’om gittin’ hurt, I set him down by de roadside. McGiffen an’ me had been ridin’ one horse, takin’ turns, de one ridin’ carryin’ de baby. A feller kep’ comin’ closer, an’ I hollered, ‘Stop, sir, or I’m goin’ to shoot you!’ an’ I shot him in de han’. He kep’ hollerin’ I had killed him, an’ de other fellers sorter scattered, an’ that give McGiffen chance to git away. An’ I got away. Had to leave de baby settin’ thar side de road. An’ they follered me up an’ got me, an’ they got McGiffen. After they captured us, they heard about thar bein’ three strangers down whar we had come f’om, an’ they suspicioned we was de men dat had been advertised for because of de trouble in Brunswick. An’ they sent after Lewis. It was one night. He had unbuckled his pistols an’ laid ’em on his bureau, an’ some visitors come to see him; an’ he was talkin’ to them, an’ eight or ten men stepped up behin’ him an’ that’s how they got him. An’ they had de three of us. An’ Governor Walker sent Bill Knox, de detective, an’ Dr. Powell he was sent to identify us. An’ we were carried to Richmond, an’ then we were carried to Greensville, an’ we were tried. De little boy was sent back to his mother. I was sent to de penitentiary for eight years, but I got out sooner for good behaviour; an’ I learned a good trade thar. But I don’t think they ought to ha’ sent me, because I was jes a boy an’ I done what I was ordered to do when I shot Mr. Lett—that what’s they sent me for. An’ de military soldiers had said I warn’t to blame. Lewis he played off crazy like he done befo’, an’ they sent him to de asylum, an’ he escaped like he done befo’. De superintendent was a member of de Loyal League. An’ McGiffen was hung, an’ I never thought he ought to ha’been hung.” Military rule was at an end and Virginia was back in the Union when the fugitives were captured.
There was another flutter of the public pulse in this county when, perhaps, the one thing that saved the day was the confidence of the negroes in Sheriff Jones. Court was in session when several people ran into the court room, shouting: “Sheriff! Sheriff! they are killing the negroes out here!” Sheriff Jones ran out and saw a crowd of five or six hundred negroes, some drunk, in the street, and in their midst two drunken white men. A few other whites were lined up against a fence, their hands on their pistols, not knowing what a moment would bring forth. People cried out: “Don’t go into that crowd, Sheriff! You’re sure to get shot!” “Here, boys!” called the Sheriff to some negroes he knew, “take me into that crowd.” Two negroes made a platform of their hands, and on this the officer was carried into the mob, his bearers shouting as they went: “Lis’n to de sheriff! Hear what de sheriff say!” He called on everybody to keep the peace, had no trouble in restoring quiet, and arrested everybody he thought ought to be arrested. “But our coloured people soon became orderly and well-behaved after the carpet-baggers left us,” says Sheriff Jones.
In several Southern States at this period, such a termination to the last incident would have been almost impossible. Here, the officer was a representative native white; he understood the people and all elements trusted him; the interest of the community was his own. With an outsider in position, the case must have been quite different; the situation more difficult and the sequel probably tragic, even conceding to the officer sincere desire to prevent trouble, a disposition carpet-baggers did not usually betray. Riots in the South were breathof life to carpet-bag governments. July 25, 1870, Governor Smith, Republican, of Alabama, said over his signature, of a politician who had criticised him for not calling out negro militia to intimidate whites: “My candid opinion is that Sibley does not want the law executed, because that would put down crime, and crime is his life’s blood. He would like very much to have a Ku Klux outrage every week, to assist him in keeping up strife between whites and blacks, that he might be more certain of the latter’s votes. He would like to have a few coloured men killed weekly to furnish semblance of truth to Senator Spencer’s libels against the State.”
In quiet country places where people did not live close enough for mutual sympathy and protection, the heavy hand was often most acutely felt. Such neighbourhoods were shortened, too, of ways to make oppression known at headquarters; it cost time and money to send committees to Washington, and influence to secure a hearing. When troubles accumulated, some hitherto peaceful neighbourhood, hamlet or town would suddenly find unenviable fame thrust upon it. There was, for instance, the Colfax Riot, Grant Parish, Louisiana, where sixty-three lives were lost. Two tickets had been announced elected. Governor Kellogg, after his manner of encouraging race wars, said, “Heaven bless you, my children!” to both, commissioned the two sets of officers, and told them to “fight it out,” which they did with the result given and the destruction of the Court House by fire. Negroes had been called in, drilled, armed and taught how to make cannon out of gas-pipe.
And now for the portrait of a carpet-bagger of whom all who knew him said: “He is the most brilliant man I ever met.” I can only give fictitious names. Otherwise, innocent people might be wounded.
A young lieutenant, discharged from the Federal Army, located in Roxmere, a college town. His first move was to pose as a friend to whites, and to insinuate himself into nice families. When there was trouble—which he stirred up—between the races, he would assume the authority—none was given him by the Government—to interfere and settle it. For instance, he would undertake to punish negroes for impertinence. He began to practise law. He married a young lady of the section, of means but not a daughter of the aristocracy; she had owned many negroes; he made out a list, which he kept, expecting the Government to pay for them. He said his father was an English clergyman, and he spoke beautifully and feelingly of his early life. When it became apparent that the negro was to be made a voter, Yankee Landon (as Roxmere called him), changed tactics; he organized Union Leagues, drilled negroes and made incendiary speeches.
One day, Judge Mortimer, hurrying into the Court House, said: “Yankee Landon is on the hustings making a damnable speech to the negroes!” Landon’s voice could be heard and the growls of his audience. The whites caught these words ringing clear and distinct: “We will depopulate this whole country of whites. We have got to do it with fire and sword!” Some one else, much excited, came in, saying, “A movement’s on foot to lynch Landon.” The old Judge hastened up the street. He met some stern-faced men and stopped them. “We know what Landon is saying,” they told him, “and we intend to swing him.” He tried to turn them from their purpose, but they declared: “There is no sense in waiting until that scoundrel has incited the negroes to massacre us.” Another cool-headed jurist sought to stay them. “Do you realise what you are going to do?” he asked. “Weare going to hang Yankee Landon.” “That will not do!” “We’ve got to do it. The safety of our homes demands it.” The combined efforts of conservative men stayed summary action. Landon got wind of what was brewing, and for a time was more prudent of tongue; then, concluding that the people were afraid to molest him, broke forth anew.
In the Union League season, there was a tremendous negro crowd on the streets; whites had hardly room to walk; they got very sick of it all. Roxmere’s college men decided to take a hand and disposed themselves for action. “Don’t give way one inch to these old slavocrats!” Landon was shouting from a goods-box, when they sent Cobb Preston out. Cobb, in a dressing-gown trailing four feet, walked into the crowd. He placed a chip on his hat. “Will some one step on my dressing-gown or knock this chip off?” he asked loudly and suavely. Everybody gave him room to trail around in. Nobody stepped near the tail of that dressing-gown! No hand approached within yards of that chip! Any sudden turn he made was a signal for fresh scatterings which left wide swath for his processional. Did he flirt around quickly, calling on somebody to step on his gown or knock off his chip, darkeys fell over each other getting out of his way. Landon understood. He knew if the college boys succeeded in starting a row he would be killed. After that, whites could use sidewalks without being shoved off. Landon was adept in pocketing insults. Men cast fearful epithets in his teeth. “I have heard Vance McGregor call him a dog, a thief—and he would take it,” says a lawyer who practised in the same courts with him.
He and a negro “represented” the county in the Black and Tan Convention. He came back a much richer man. Nobody visited his family. One day,Rev. Dr. Godfrey encountered on the street a little girl, who asked: “Have you seen my papa?” “Who is your papa, little one?” “Yan-kee Landon!” she piped. He led her to the corner and tenderly directed her way. Rev. Dr. Godfrey did not hesitate to arraign Landon from his pulpit. One Sunday, when Landon and his wife sat in the front pew, and the conversion of Zaccheus happened to be his subject, the congregation was electrified to hear him draw comparisons between Zaccheus and carpet-baggers, to the great disparagement of the latter. He spoke of the fine horses, wines and cigars of modern Mr. Zaccheus, and of Mrs. Zaccheus’ silks and jewels. “Zaccheus of old could say,” he cried, “‘If I have taken anything from any man, I restore him fourfold!’ Not so Zaccheus of today,” and he looked straight in Landon’s face. Landon’s contribution was equal to that of all the other people in the church put together. The Landons gave up their pew, and attended worship elsewhere, but presently came back to Dr. Godfrey’s, the “swell” church. He spared them not. But he went to see Landon’s wife and sent his wife to see her. “Mrs. Landon is a young mother, my dear,” he said, “you should go.”
Twice Landon represented the district in the Legislature, first in the House, then in the Senate. While Commonwealth’s Attorney, he made a startling record; he ran a gambling saloon, a thing it was his sworn duty to ferret out and prosecute. Hazard, chuck-a-luck and other games of chance were played there. It was a new departure in a quiet, religious town; the college boys were drawn in. Judge Mortimer’s little son trotted into it at the heels of a grown-up relative, and going home innocently told his father about “the funny little things they play with; when they win, they take the money; when Mr. Landon wins, he takes it.” Inmodern parlance, the old judge “pulled” that saloon next evening, bagging thirty of the nicest young fellows in the community. They were indicted for gambling and Landon for keeping a gambling saloon. Landon prosecuted everybody but himself, convicting the last one; then resigned, and McGregor conducted the case against him. His sentence was $100 fine and four months in jail. While in jail he studied law and acquired more knowledge of it than in all the years of his freedom; he had known little about it, shrewdness and sharpness standing him in place of knowledge. A hog-drover was put in the cell with him one night and he won $150 out of him at poker. The Governor pardoned him out at three months. He ran for Commonwealth’s Attorney and was elected; he made an able and efficient officer. He would prosecute unswervingly his closest friend. His political ally built the new jail, Landon getting him the job. “I wonder who will be the first fool to get in here,” he said to Landon. He was; Landon convicted him. Men who despised his principles admired his intellect. In court-room repartee he could take the wind out of McGregor’s sails, and McGregor was past master in the art. He was able, brilliant, unscrupulous, without a moral conscience, but with a keen intellectual one. He was no spendthrift in rascality, economised in employment of evil means, using them no farther than self-interest required. He could show kindness gracefully; ceased to stir up negroes when it ceased to pay. A neighbour who was civil when others snubbed him, went to Washington when Landon, at his zenith, was there in a high Government position, and opened a law office. Landon threw work his way.
One day McGregor, Governor of his State, got a letter from Landon; a great foreign dignitary, visitingthis country, was to be entertained at Landon’s palace; would McGregor lend the old State flag to be draped with the Stars and Stripes and the foreigner’s flag over the end of the room where Landon and the dignitary would stand while receiving? McGregor sent it. In the little town in which he tricked and won his way, court was never paid to Landon on account of his wealth and power, but people gradually came to treat him less coldly as he changed with the times. Reconstruction tried men’s souls and morals; a man who went to pieces under temptation sometimes came out a gentleman, or something like it, when temptation was over. Landon won favors of all parties. Cleveland gave him a position. A committee waited upon Mr. McKinley, asking appointment for Landon. Mr. McKinley demurred: “I understand that in the South, Mr. Landon is not considered a gentleman.” “We promised him this if he would render the party the service which he has rendered.” The President had to yield. Roosevelt, who came to the Presidency without election, turned this man down with a firm hand.
THE DEVIL ON THE SANTEE
The Devil on the Santee
(A Rice-Planter’s Story)
Between the plantation where harmony and industry still prevailed and that in which was complete upheaval of the old order, were thousands showing its disintegration in intermediate grades. On the James River, in Virginia, and on waterways in rice and cotton lands up which Federal gunboats steamed, and on the Sea Islands, plantations innumerable furnished parallel cases to that set forth in the following narrative, which I had from Captain Thomas Pinckney, of Charleston, South Carolina. When Captain Pinckney went down to El Dorado, his plantation on the Santee, in 1866, he found things “in a shocking condition and the very devil to pay.” The night before reaching his place he spent at the house of an English neighbour, who had had oversight of his property. He received this report:
“Your negroes sacked your house, stripped it of furniture, bric-a-brac, heirlooms, and divided these among themselves. They got it into their heads that the property of whites belongs to them; and went about taking possession with utmost determination and insolence. Nearly all houses here have been served the same way. I sent for a United States officer and he made them restore furniture—the larger pieces, which are much damaged. Small things—mementoes which you value as much or more—are gone for good. There was but one thing they did not remove—the mirror in thewall.”[22]“The negroes have been dancing shin-digs in your house,” the Englishman went on. “They have apportioned your land out among themselves.”
Yet the Captain was not fully prepared for the desolation that met his eyes when he went home next day. Ever before, he had been met with glad greetings. Now, instead of a merry crowd of darkeys rushing out with shouts of “Howdy do, Marster!” “Howdy do, Boss!”, silence reigned and no soul bade him welcome as he made his way to his own door. Within the house one faithful servant raised her voice in lonely and pathetic notes of joy. “Where are the others?” he asked. “Where are the men?” “Don’ know, Marster.” “Tell any you can find to come here.” She returned from search to say none could be found. Dinner-hour passed. The men kept themselves invisible. He said to her: “I will be back tomorrow. Tell the men I must see every one of them then.” He returned armed. It was his known custom as a huntsman to carry a gun; hence he could carry one now without betraying distrust. “Indeed, I felt no fear or distrust,” he says; “these were my own servants, between whom and myself the kindest feelings had always existed. They had been carefully and conscientiously trained by my parents; I had grown up with some of them. They had been glad to see me from the time that, as a little boy, I accompanied my mother when she made Saturday afternoon rounds of the quarters, carrying a bowl of sugar, and followed by her littlehandmaidens bearing other things coloured people liked. At every cabin that she found swept and cleaned, she left a present as an encouragement to tidiness. I could not realise a need of going protected among my own people, whom I could only remember as respectful, happy and affectionate.”
He bade the woman summon the men, and he waited under the trees. They came, sullen, reluctant, evincing no trace of old-time cordiality; addressed him as “you” or “Cap’n”; were defiant; brought their guns. “Men,” he said, “I know you are free. I do not wish to interfere with your freedom. But I want my old hands to work my lands for me. I will pay you wages.” They were silent. “I want you to put my place in order, and make it as fruitful as it used to be, when it supported us all in peace and plenty. I recognise your right to go elsewhere and work for some one else, but I want you to work for me and I will on my part do all I can for you.”
They made answer short and quick: “O yes, we gwi wuk! we gwi wuk all right. De Union Ginruls dee done tell us tuh come back f’om follin arter de army an’ dig greenbacks outer de sod. We gwi wuk. We gwi wuk fuh ourse’ves. We ain’ gwi wuk fuh no white man.” “Where will you go?” “We ain’ gwine nowhar. We gwi wuk right here on de lan’ whar we wuz bo’n an’ whar belongs tuh us.” Some had not been born on the land, but had been purchased during the war by Captain Pinckney, in the kindness of his heart, to prevent family division in the settlement of an estate. One of this lot, returning from a Yankee gunboat, swaggered to conference under the trees, in a fine uniform, carrying a handsome rifle, and declared he would work or not as he pleased, come and go as he pleased and consider the land his own. He went tohis cabin, stood in the door, looked the Captain in the eye, brought his gun down with a crash, and said: “Yes, I gwi wuk right here. I’d like tuh see any man put me outer dis house!”
Captain Pinckney, after waiting for the men to think over the situation, assembled them again. Their attitude was more insolent and aggressive. He gave them ten days longer for decision; then all who would not work must go. His neighbours were having similar experiences. In a section where a few years before perfect confidence had existed between white and black, all white men went armed, weapons exposed to view. They were few, the blacks many. After consultation, they reported conditions to General Devens at Charleston, and suggested that he send down a representative. He sent a company under an officer whom the planters carried from plantation to plantation. Negroes were called and addressed: “I have come to tell you people that these lands belong to these planters. The Government has not given these lands to you; they do not belong to the Government to give. You are free to hire out to whom you will, or to rent lands. But you must work. You can’t live without work. I advise you to make contracts quickly. If crops are not made, you and your families will suffer.”
This Federal visitation was not without wholesome effect. Yet the negroes would not work till starvation drove them to it. The Captain’s head-plower came confessing: “Cap’n, I ’clar’ ’fo’ Gawd, suh, I ain’ got no vittles fuh my wife an’ chillun. I ain’ got a day’s rations in my cabin.” “It’s your own fault. You can go to work any minute you want to.” “Cap’n, I’se willin’. I been willin’ fuh right smart while. I ain’ nuvver seed dis way we been doin’ wuz zackly right. I been ’fused in my min’. But de other niggers deewon’ let me wuk. Dee don’ want me tuh wuk fuh you, suh. I’se feared.” The Captain was sorely tempted to give rations without conditions, but realised that he must stand his ground. In a day or two the head-plower reappeared. “Cap’n, I come tuh ax you tuh lemme wuk fuh you, suh.” “All right. There’s your plow and mule ready. You can draw rations ahead.” One by one all came back. They had suffered, and their ex-master had suffered with them.
Many planters had severer trials than the Captain and his immediate neighbours. Down on the coast, negroes demanded possession of plantations, barricaded them and shot at owners. They pulled up bridges so owners could not reach their homes, and in this and other ways kept the whites out of property. Many planters never recovered their lands. When the time came that they might otherwise have done so, they were unable to pay accumulated taxes, and their homesteads passed forever out of their keeping.
In making contracts, Captain Pinckney’s negroes did not want money. “We don’ trus’ dat money. Maybe it git lak Confeddick money.” In rice they saw a stable value. Besides a share in the general crop, the Captain gave each hand a little plot on which to grow rice for family consumption. When the general crop was divided into shares, they would say, after retaining a “sample”: “Keep my part, suh, an’ sell it wid yo’s.” They knew he could do better for them than they could for themselves. In business and in the humanities, they looked to him as their truest friend. If any got sick, got out of food and clothes, got into a difficulty or trouble of any sort, they came or sent for him; sought his advice about family matters wherein they would trust no other man’s counsel; trusted him in everything except politics, in regard to which they would rely uponthe word of the most unprincipled stranger did he but appear under the title “Republican,” “Radical,” “Union Leaguer.”
Carpet-baggers told them: “If the whites get into power, they will put you back in slavery, and will not let your wives wear hoop-skirts. If we win the election we will give you forty acres and a mule.” “I know for a fact,” Captain Pinckney assured me, “that at Adam’s Run negroes came to the polls bringing halters for mules which they expected to carry home.”
The excitement of the election of 1876, when native whites strained every nerve to win the negro vote, was fully felt on the Santee. The morning news reached El Dorado of Hampton’s election, the Captain, according to custom, walked down to his wharf to give orders for the day. He found his wharf foreman sitting on an upturned canoe, his head hung down, the picture of dejection. “William,” the Captain said, “I have good news.” “Whut is it, suh?” “General Hampton is elected.” Silence. Presently the negro half lifted his face, and looking into the eyes of the white man with the saddest, most hopeless expression in his own, asked slowly: “Well—Cap’n—whut you goin’ tuh do wid we, now?” The master’s heart ached for him! Remanded back to slavery—that was what negroes were taught to look for—to slavery not such as they had known, but in which all the follies and crimes to which they had been incited since freedom should be charged up to them. They did not, could not, realise how their old owners pitied, condoned, forgave.
Next election the struggle was renewed. After a hopeful barbecue, the Captain’s hands were threshing his rice crop. He called the foreman behind the stacks, and asked: “Well, Monday, what are you people going to do at the polls tomorrow?” “Dee gwi votede ’Publican ticket, suh. Ef dee tells you anything else, dee’s lyin’. I gwi vote de ’Publican ticket, suh. I got it tuh do. I b’lieve all what you white gent’muns been tellin’ us at de barbecues. I knows myse’f dat dis way we niggers is a-doin’ an’ a-votin’ ain’ de bes’ way fuh de country—anybody kin see dat. But den I got tuh vote de ’Publican ticket, suh. We all has. Las’ ’lection I voted de Democrack ticket an’ dee killed my cow. Abum, he vote de Democrack ticket; dee killed his colt.” Monday counted off the negroes who had voted the “Democrack” ticket, and every one had been punished. One had been bombarded in his cabin; another’s rice crop had been taken—even the ground swept up and every grain carried off, leaving him utterly destitute. “I tell you, suh,” said Monday, “I got tuh do it on my ’count, an’ on yo’ ’count. You make me fo’man an’ ef I didn’ vote de ’Publican ticket, I couldn’ make dese niggers wuk. I couldn’ do nothin’ ’tall wid ’em.”
MRS. WADE HAMPTON
(Daughter of Governor McDuffie, of South Carolina.)
From a painting photographed by Reckling & Sons, Columbia, S. C.
The night before an election the Democratic Club was in session at McClellanville when Mr. McClellan came in and said there would be trouble next day. He had heard on the river that negroes were buying up ammunition and were coming armed to the polls. He had gone to stores and given orders that sale should be stopped. Whites now tried to buy but found stock sold out. They collected available arms and ammunition in village and neighbourhood, and concealed these under a hay-wagon, which appeared next day near the polls, one of many of similar appearance. Squads were detailed for duty near polls and wagon.
Blacks came armed, and, demurring, stacked muskets at the cross-roads which marked the hundred-yard limit prescribed by election ruling; all day they were in terrible humour. “I heard my own servants,” Captain Pinckney tells, “between whom and myself thekindliest feelings had existed, say in threatening tones: ‘We’s here tuh stan’ up fuh our rights. We ain’ gwi leave dese polls. None our colour got tuh leave dese polls ’fo’ dee close.’”
Whites preserved a front of unconcern they were far from feeling. Seventy-five whites and 500 blacks voted at this precinct. Guns once in the hands of the blacks, and turned against this little handful of whites, God help all concerned! Whites had begun to hope the day would end smoothly, when a trifling incident seemed to precipitate conflict. Two drunken white men rode hallooing along the road. The negroes, taking this as a pretext for a fight, rushed for their muskets. An old trial justice, Mr. Leland, sprang on a box and called loudly: “Come here! Come here!” They looked back. “I am the Peace Officer!” he yelled. “Come, listen to me!” Threatening, curious, sullen, they came back some paces with an air of defiance, of determination suspended for the moment. “I don’t like the looks of things,” said the old trial justice, “and I am going to call on the most influential men in the community to act as my constabulary force and help me maintain order. Pinckney!” The gunboat desperado stepped forward. “Calhoun! De Saussure! Huger! Horry! Porcher! Gaillard!” So the wily old justice went on, calling names famous in the annals of South Carolina, and black men answered. “Line up there! Take the Oath of Office! Hold up your hands and swear that, so help you God, you will help me maintain the laws and preserve the peace and dignity of the State of South Carolina!” He happened to have in his pocket a dozen old badges of office, and swift as he swore the men in, he pinned badges on them. He made them a flighty, heroic little speech and the face of events was changed.
He had picked off ring-leaders in mischief for justices of the peace. Whites found it difficult to pocket smiles while beholding them strutting around, proud as peacocks, and reducing to meekness inoffensive negroes who would never have made any disturbance in the first place but for the prodding of these same new “limbs of the law.” It was trying in a different way to see a peaceable, worthy negro knocked about incontinently by bullies “showing off.” Yet the matter in hand was to get the day over without bloodshed. And this end was achieved.
Avoidance of bloodshed was not attained at all public meetings, as students of reconstruction history know too well. “And all sorts of lies went North about us,” says the Captain, “the Radicals and their paid allies sending them; and sometimes, good people writing about things they did not understand or knew by hearsay only. I stopped reading Northern papers for a long time—they made me mad. The ‘Tribune’s’ false accounts of the Ellenton Riot exasperated me beyond endurance. It got its story from a Yankee schoolmarm who got it from a negro woman. I was so aggravated that I sat down and wrote Whitelaw Reid my mind. I told him I had subscribed to the ‘Tribune’ for years, but now it was so partisan it could not tell the truth; its reports were not to be trusted and I could not stand it any longer; and he would oblige me by never sending me another copy; he could give the balance of my subscription to some charity. I directed his attention to the account of the Ellenton Riot in the ‘New York Herald’ and reminded him that the truth was as accessible to one paper as the other. Reid did not answer my letter except through an editorial dealing with mine and similar epistles.” He said in part, to the best of the Captain’s memory:
“We have received indignant letters from the South in regard to recent articles in this paper. A prominent South Carolinian writes: ‘I can’t stand the “Tribune” any longer!’ One party from Texas says: ‘Stop that d—d paper!’ Now, all this for reasons which can be explained in a few words. When the ‘Tribune’ is exposing Republican rascalities, the Southerners read it with pleasure. But when it exposes Democratic rascalities, they write: ‘Stop that d—d paper!’”
BATTLE FOR THE STATE HOUSE