"She was a child and he was a child,In his kingdom by the sea;When she loved with a love that was more than love,Alice and Arthur McRae."
"She was a child and he was a child,In his kingdom by the sea;When she loved with a love that was more than love,Alice and Arthur McRae."
A person on entering the library in an old-fashioned mansion, situated in the heart of a country that was very beautiful in the landscaping of nature, at eleven a. m. of the 12th of November, would have observed a venerable gentleman reclining upon an antique sofa, plainly upholstered in morocco. The gentleman was reading from a book entitled, "The Life and Speeches of Daniel Webster." The stranger might have further observed, that the right hand of the old gentleman would now and again move with some energy of expression, as if he were punctuating a particular paragraph by an emphatic dissent. If the reader had been asked for an opinion as to the character and ability of the illustrious commoner, whose views were so logically expressed in the memoir, he would have said without hesitation, that "He possessed the acumen of the wisest of statesmen, but that his opinions as a strict constructionist were extra hazardous, indeed out of harmony with the true theory of a republican form of government—a government of co-ordinate states that had entered voluntarily into a compact for a more perfect union. But (he may have continued) against the doctrine of nullification, indeed against the ordinances of secession, the irony of fate, through thisgreat man, projected an argument whose logic was irrefutable in its last analysis. Foreshadowed events put into the mouth of Mr. Webster a menace, whose uninterpretable meaning in 1833 was clearly understood when the baleful power of the storm swept from the high seas the last privateer with its letter of marque, disbanded the last armed scout south of the breakwater of the Delaware, and broke the heart of the greatest warrior since Charlemagne; a chieftain more honored in defeat than Hannibal, or Napoleon, or Sobieski, or the great Frederick. This master craftsman in the construction corps of the Republic; whose resourceful intellect engrafted a principle as fixed and inviolable into the Constitution as fate, propelled against the equity of 'peaceful separation' the weight of an overmastering influence. This menace to the South marked the tumultuous heart-beats of the commercial North, when it contemplated the separation of indestructible states. It made of the Republic a huge camp of instruction, into which the nations of the earth were perpetually dumping their refuse populations; it girdled the South with a cincture of embattled mercenaries; it imparted to the Constitution a disciplinary vigor; it gave to partisan legislation an inspiration; it gave to centralized power an omnipotent reserve that unnerved every arm, paralyzed every tongue, and rendered organized effort abortive in the crucial struggle for Southern independence. But, sir, (and the eyes of the old man would gleam as with the light of an overpowering genius), a government created by the States, amendable by the States, preserved by the States, may be annihilated by the States."
It was one of those leaky, bleak November days, when the weather, out of temper with itself, is continually making wry faces at the rain and the forest and the cattle, that a gentleman lately arrivedfrom the auld town of Edinboro, shook the glistening rain-drops from his shaggy talma in the great hall of Ingleside, as he observed to the host with a smile, "Thot it was a wee bit scrowie, but the weether wad be fayre in its ain gude time." It was indeed one of those leaden days that occasionally comes in the Southland with the November chills, pinching the herds that are out upon the glades and meadows, when the winds sang in the tree boughs with a strange and melancholy rhythm. A sailor passing up the forward ladder from the forecastle to observe the weather would say, with a shudder, that it was a "greasy day," and that the sky and shrouds and storm-sails were leaky. Col. Seymour, upon ordinary occasions, was a gentleman of discrimination, and his judgment of character was fairly correct. Like the true Scotch Southron, as he was, he had his own ideals, his own loves and his own idiosyncrasies. He loved Scotland and her people, her memories, her history, her renown, her trossachs, her lakes, her mountains; they were his people, and Scotland was the "ain love of his fayther and mither." He had not forgotten the language of her beautiful hills and vales, though he was a boy when, with his parents, he bade adieu to his bonny country to find a home across the water in the Old North State, so prodigal and impartial in the distribution of honors and riches to all who came with clean hands and stout hearts. So when the neat and genteel Scotchman gave his name as Hugh McAden, the old man's heart impulsively warmed towards his guest, for he knew of a verity that a McAden everywhere was a man of honor—the name, an open sesame to the hearts and homes of Scotch Americans.
"I will make you very comfortable to-day, sir," he observed, as he escorted Mr. McAden to his library. There were great hickory logs, half consumed,resting upon the antiquated brass andirons in the fire-place, giving warmth and cheer to the whole room. The stranger, rubbing his hands vigorously, for they were very cold and stiff, observed interrogatively, "You do not let the chill ond weet coom into the hoose?"
"No indeed," replied the Colonel with a broad smile, "these inflictions are for other folks, whose liberty is upon the highways and in the forests in such weather."
"Ah, for ither fauk; maybe the naygurs," laughingly suggested the Scotchman.
"Yes, you can hear the guns in the woods, where they are hunting cattle not their own. You can see drunken squads marching upon the roads upon such a day."
"Ah!" he exclaimed, "ond do ye call this free America? May-be ye hae no goovernment as ye haed lang syne, ond no law ither."
The Colonel assured the gentleman that public affairs were at sixes and sevens, and the negroes now held the mastery over their former owners, and their discipline was not over indulgent.
"Ond do the naygurs make the laws for sic as you?" he enquired in a startled way.
"Oh yes," replied the Colonel, quite seriously.
"Alack-a-day!" exclaimed the astonished man. "The deil take sic a goovernment, ond the deil tak sic a coontry, ond the deil tak the naygurs! Coom to Edinboro, mon, where there is not o'ermuch siller, but where ivery mon is his ain laird, ond his hoose is his ain hame. Ye ken fine that I am a stranger hereaboot. Ond will the naygurs harm a poor mishanalled mon like me?" he enquired in alarm. The Colonel, with an effort to conceal his mirth, reassured his friend that no harm would come to him.
"Ond wad ye say," the Scotchman interrupted,"that amang the naygurs ond sic a government, that a puir body wad hae the protection o' his ain queen?" he again asked, with his fears still unsubdued. The amiable host, shaking from an effort at self-control, again remarked that the carpet-bag government had made no attempt at personal violence upon strangers, and that he was as safe here as in his own city of Edinboro; and the Scotchman laughed away his fears.
"Sic an auld fule!" he exclaimed in great glee. "I am hardly masel in these lowlands," the Scotchman continued, as the conversation changed into more agreeable channels. "Ye hae na moontains ond bonnie hills hereaboot," he continued, as he looked from the window upon the low-lying fields and meadows.
"But, my friend," replied the Colonel, "if you will abide with me for awhile you will quite forget your mountains, for there is a charm and freshness in the landscape here when you become familiar with it."
"I am sure of thot," quickly answered the guest; "but ye ken fine that a puir body must abide in his ain hame. What wad a man do in th' Soothland wi' his beezeness in Edinboro?" And the Scotchman smiled as he asked the unanswerable question. "Ah, well," the Colonel replied with an assumed dignity, "you would do as we do."
"Ond what is thot?" asked the Scotchman.
"Swear and vapor from early morn to dewy eve."
"Ah! thot wad na do, thot wad na do," he replied, horrified at such a suggestion, "The meenister in holy kirk wad discipline a puir body, ond the deil wad be to play. I guess I'll gang hame agen ond do as ilka fauk do in th' auld toon."
The Colonel had not been so happy in many a day as with the plain, matter-of-fact Scotchman, in a sense, a type and representative of his ownpeople, and a man who could speak so eloquently of the fadeless glory of old Scotland.
"Hae ye nae gude wife ond bairns?" he enquired.
"Yes, an invalid wife and an only child, sir," said the Colonel, as tears began to gather in his eyes. "My only son, sir, was slain in battle some years ago."
"Ond was it for sic a goovernment as ye hae noo, that ye gaed up your bonnie lad to dee?" he asked quite innocently.
The old man bowed his head in silent grief. He could not answer, and he walked across the room and looked out upon the murky sky—a funereal coverlid, it appeared, laid over the grave of poor Harry.
"Puir lad," uttered Mr. McAden, half aside, as he drew his handkerchief across his face and gazed abstractedly into the blazing fire. It was quite an interval before the Colonel was able to subdue this paroxysm of grief that had quite overcome him, and, availing himself of the earliest opportunity to excuse himself, withdrew from the room. To Mr. McAden the moment was fraught with sincere sorrow. He had unwittingly opened the sluice-way at the veteran's heart, and great tides, crimsoned, as it seemed, with the blood of poor Harry, were pouring into it. He could find no surcease only in the oft-repeated exclamation of reproach.
"Sic an auld fule! Sic an auld fule! But I thocht the mon was o'er happy in the love of his gude wife ond the bairn. Haed I thocht thot the lad had deed in battle, I wad na gaed him sic a sair thrust in his auld heart."
The Colonel retired to his own chamber to repair the injury that had been done to his feelings, and presently he returned with a smiling face, accompanied by his daughter, and he said, introducing her.
"This sir, is my daughter, Alice."
"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. McAden, rising with extended hand, "The lassie is like the sire, Coonel. I can see the fayther in her een."
"And the counterpart of her mither in all except the een," replied her father.
"You ond the gude wife ond the lassie must coom to Edinboro, Coonel; ye ken fine thot her rooyal men ond weemen are i' th' groond noo, ond there are memorials here ond there in the auld kirk-yards where their puir bodies are laid, but our men ond weemen still are vera fayre ond gentle, ond we niver put our een upon a naygur. Ond, now thot I can abide nae langer wi' ye, will ye nae tell me a wee bit o' the history o' our ain fauk in the Soothland, for ye ken fine thot the auld anes wad be askin aboot this ane ond thot ane, in fine all aboot the Scotch in your ain coontry, when I gae hame to Edinboro."
The subject referred to by the Scotchman was full of a picturesque interest, and no man in the Southland took a higher delight in imparting such information as he could command, than Colonel Seymour. Turning his old arm-chair so that he could observe his guest more closely, he began:
"The characteristics of these people are ineffaceably impressed upon our civilization. Indeed they are as deeply grounded into the religious and social soil of North Carolina, as though they had taken root like the rhododendron under the rocks and in the fissures of our hills and mountains. The Scotch-Irish American, with gigantic strides, has at last sat himself down upon the loftiest pinnacle of our 19th century civilization. He has never yielded to oppression; he has never compounded with evil. These brave people, bringing hither the virtues of their fathers as well as their own, have given North Carolina its most luminous page. Theymade the earliest industry of the Cape Fear—the industry of colonization. It was an industry that sought to provide homes for the people, and to dignify labor and life in the midst of surroundings that taxed every resource of action, and the ultimate verge of human daring; an industry that employed the plainest instruments—the axe to hew down the forest, and the plow to turn the furrow. Their primitive sires in these early settlements did not control those powerful auxiliaries that now multiply the skill of man; nor did they enjoy the aristocracy of the recognized power of wealth. They cared nothing for mammonism, that some philosophical crank has defined to be a physical force that makes men invertebrates. Here was life with the struggle of pioneers; a struggle for place rather than for position; for homes rather than castles, that prepared the intellect for a higher development, and man for ultimate power. The victory of the axe and plow were the pre-ordained antecedents to the victory of the forum and pulpit, and the triumph over the crude obstructions of nature was the divine prophecy of undisciplined toil. Out of the ruggedness of such an epoch came forth a condition of virtue and integrity; of honest and honorable convictions; of sincere patriotism; of a race of men who looked to themselves only, and originated within this scant domain the literature of economic life. It was here that the domestic sentiment displayed its captivating charm. Nowhere on earth was there a more generous love for children, and whenever this attribute of the heart appears, the prophetic benediction of Christ, as childhood lay in His hallowed arms, is fulfilled. Here was social life, too, in its freedom, picturesqueness and animation, without demoralizing conditions. Away northward and southward, bays and rivers stretched their wedded waves, hills holdingin their dead grasp the secrets of centuries; the ancient miracles of fire and water where chaos had been transfixed in its primeval heavings; all these were here subject to the mighty mastery that men should eventually exert, and side by side with humble homes, arose schools and churches—emblems of the power and purity of the people. Here the ambassadors of Christ were persuasive with tongue, fervent in spirit; they felt that their religion was more ancient than government, higher than any influence; more sacred than any trust; a religion that was benevolence in its gentlest mood, courage in its boldest daring, affection in its intensest power; philanthropy in its widest reach; patriotism in its most impassioned vigor; reason in its broadest display; the mighty heart that throbbed through every artery; fed every muscle; sped the hidden springs of an electric current through every nerve. Such were and are "oor ain fauk in th' Soothland."
"Ah, I ken fine," replied the Scotchman with enthusiasm, "that your forebears came from the hielands, and yoor knowledge of the gude fauk in yoor ain coontry quite surprises me. Did ye not say that yoor fayther ond mither came from Edinboro?" he inquired with animation.
"Yes," replied the Colonel, "in the good old days; and they lie buried side by side in the little cemetery over the hill yonder, where I shall rest after a wee bit."
"These are bonnie lands hereaboot, but there is mony a glade in auld Scotland where a puir body may sleep as tranquilly," said the Scotchman with feeling, "ond when I dee my sepulchre shall be near the auld hame where there are no naygurs ond no sic a goovernment, in th' shadow o' th' auld kirk o' my fayther ond mither."
To the people of the South the infliction of the carpet-bag government was an outrage that "smelled to heaven." The changed character—the degradation of the South was a deplorable consequence—it was the inoculating of a virus into the circulation of the body politic that it will take a century to cleanse.
The power of attainting and confiscating, forbidden by the law from a full knowledge of its lamentable use by the factious parliaments of Great Britain, was shamelessly exercised by local jurisdictions of the South until nothing was left to the most virtuous of patriots but their name, their character, and the fragrance of their great and illustrious actions, to go down to posterity. A stranger coming to any legislature would have taken it at one time for a disorderly club-room, where ignorant and vicious partisans, white and black, were assembled to lay plans for their own aggrandizement and the prostration of the country. At another time he would suppose it to be a hustings for the delivery of electioneering harangues; at another, an areopagus for the condemnation of all virtuous men; then a theatre, for the entertainment of a most diverted auditory; always a laboratory for the compounding of alarms, conspiracies and panics. In the deliberations of the members there was no check to the license of debate, or the prodigal expenditure of money; no voice to control their judgments of outlawry and sequestration. Radamanthus himself, in some stage of his infernal process, would atleast listen to his victim; "First he punisheth, then he listeneth, and lastly he compelleth to confess." The inventors of mythology could not conceive of a Tartarus so regardless of the forms of justice as not to allow the souls of the condemned to speak for themselves; but reconstruction, trampling upon all laws, denied to the long-suffering people of the South the right to plead their innocence in the face of the concentrated accumulation of frightful accusations,all founded upon the "baseless fabric of a vision."
Centuries ago the last saurian died in the ooze of the bad lands in Kansas, but by an unnatural law of reproduction the carpet bagger and scalawag, with the same destructive instincts, with the same malodorous presence, found its bed of slime in the heart of the South and disported with a devilish energy. Monsters of malice, spawning evil gendering fanaticism, focussed their evil eye upon the millions of freedmen, whose destiny and happiness were closely interwoven with their old masters; with masters who had yielded their swords but not their honor; who were "discouraged, yet erect; perplexed, yet not unto despair; pursued, yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not conquered." The poor negro, under the seductive charms of these human serpents, languished, and languishing, did die.
The carpet-baggers preached to the negroes an anti-slavery God, from the gospel of hate, of revenge. Slavery was the tempest of their poor souls, and revenge must assuage the swollen floods. "The thronged cities—the marks of Southern prosperity and the monuments of Southern civilization," said they, "are yours, yours to enjoy, to alienate, to transmit to posterity. Your empire is established indestructibly throughout the new South. This land shall not be permitted to remain as a lairfor the wild beasts that have clutched at the throat of this republic to destroy it. We have heard the cries of our Israel in bondage, and we have come to give you the land that flows with milk and honey." Poor black souls! What a delusion! The day will surely come when the curtain shall be drawn and the deceivers, active and dormant, in this dark tragedy, shall be dragged before the footlights to receive the curse of an indignant reprobation. Poor negro! He is starving for bread and they give him the elective franchise. He begs to be emancipated from hunger, and they decree that he shall be a freedman.
Who will dare assert that the pride, the patriotism, the spirit of the South was not alarmingly compromised by the issues of the Civil War?—a war that was the exercise of both violence and discipline by sovereign authority. We are told that wars are an evil, come when they may; they are just or unjust, moral or immoral, civilized or savage, as the ingredients of violated rights—demand of reparation and refusal—shall be observed, neglected or abused. Perhaps the prostrated South should have been advertent to this fact before she delivered the first blow. But whether right or wrong, when the armies were disbanded, when it yielded its organic being—its sovereignty—to overwhelming resources and numbers, the law of nations laid upon the paramount sovereignty obligations which have never been performed, either in letter or spirit. The government that re-instated its authority was bound by a circle of morals, including the obligations of justice and mercy, reciprocally acting and reacting.
The emancipation of five million slaves was a supplemental act of war; a renewed declaration that the tramp of embattled armies should echo and re-echo from the Potomac to the Rio Grande,until the foot of a slave should not press its "polluted" soil. Their enfranchisement was neither an act of war or of exasperation, but an act of diplomacy, extra-hazardous as results have shown, with the effect of humiliating the conquered South. It introduced throughout the South a sacrilegious arm against the fairest superstructure of Christian manhood the world has ever known; stamped the history of the nation with dishonor, and betrayed the proudest experiment in favor of the rights of man. It taught the freedmen, through the vicious counsel of intriguing, designing demagogues, that their liberty was still insecure; that to accomplish it in its ultimate triumph and blessing, the savage axe must be laid at the root of the social institutions; that they must lay violent hands upon the men, women and children who had made their emancipation an accomplished fact. Hence a war whose horrors should be accentuated by the lighted torch was inaugurated, and an inglorious campaign of reprisals by placable tools, whose zeal to preserve what they now purposed in their blind fanaticism to destroy, was a few years before as ardent and persevering.
Poor, pitiable, deluded human beings, who as chattels real—impedimenta of Southern plantations—had guarded the peace of the home, and many of whom were faithful unto death!
Reconstruction superimposed an artificial citizenship—a citizenship essentially lacking in every resource of intellectual strength—it was without ideals or examples for the government of the freedmen of the proud Southern commonwealths. The allegiance of the negroes was as friable as a rope of sand; they were without a definite conception of the responsibilities of sovereignty—without a fixed principle to guide them in governmental policy—with impulses of brutish suggestion, and undermasters more inexorable, more exacting than those they had deserted upon the abandoned plantations. How painful was such a crisis that split up the old South into disgraced and bleeding fragments!
We come to speak for a moment of the microbes that ate their way into the hearts of the seceded commonwealths, while the ruins of southern homes were still smoking; and before the blood of chivalrous southrons had dried upon our battle-fields. I commend the chalice to the lips of those who will deny the truth of what is herein written and desire that such a man might realize a bare modicum of what was suffered and endured. The elective franchise was the panacea for every evil; an antispasmodic, when there were occasional exacerbations in the public mind; our fathers valued the elective franchise because in its patriotic expression was the covenant of freemen.
When our hopes were feeblest, and our horizon darkest, the scalawag fled like a hound to the sheltering woods whence he sallied forth like an outlaw. The reddened disc of the sun that went down at Appomattox gave him an inspiration for his hellish work, and he went out in the gloom of the starless night, declaring with a more vicious temper than did Henry of Agincourt "the fewer the men the greater the honor" or in its appropriate paraphrase "the deeper the pockets the greater the spoil." His philanthropy and selfish interests never clash. He claimed always to be rigidly righteous, and was seen in the camp-meeting and the church sanctified and demure to a proverb. He spoke of the poor negro in paroxysms of charity—a most rare benevolence which employed its means in theft and crime; a charity which performs its vows and gives its alms with money plundered from the freedmen. The scalawag like other unclassified vermin was without respectable antecedents;with an acute sense of smell like the "lap-heavy" scout of the Andes, he sought his prey when there was no fear of the approach of man. As an Irish barrister once wrote upon the door of a plebians' carriage, "Why do you laugh?" so the humorist of the sixties could have written upon the shirt-front of the scalawag "Why do people hold their noses?" He was never mentioned by naturalists, unless under some other name he was paired off with the vulture. In reconstruction days the transformation of this abortion of nature from vulture to serpent was made without the break of a feather or the splitting of a talon. With a seductive grimace he whispered into the open ear of the freedmen "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt not surely die." He was as much an augury of evil as the brood of ravens that once alighted upon Vespasian's pillar. Had he been seen plying his vocation in the first empire Napoleon would have said to Fouche, "Shoot the accursed beast on the spot." The carpet bagger when not fighting the pestiferous vermin in the Chickahominy swamps was pilfering. He went into the army conscripted like a gentleman; he came out of the army at night when the back of the sentry was turned and without a furlough, like a patriot. These twain were the autocrats of the new south, which had its christening in the blood of heroes; they were the furies that rode the red harlot around the circle, when her flanks were still wet with human slaughter, and her speed was increased by the jeering negroes. When Sister Charity in an occasional fit would fall unconsciously into the receptive bosom of her black lover in the prayer-meeting, with the wild exclamation "Bress Gord I sees de hosses und de charyut er cumin!" they would clap their hands in joy and shout, "Persevere in the good cause my sister." When old deaconJohnson upon some happy suggestion from the "sliding elder" would turn up the white of one eye, they would turn up the whites of the others; and when deacon Thompson came around for alms for the heathen, they would slip under the pennies a brass-button and inwardly thank God they were not like the poor publican or the hypocritical pharisee. Their first meeting with the freedmen was flattering and agreeable; it was an expression of frail vows of love, sweet but not permanent, which bore but the perfume and dalliance of a moment; it was the fusing of units of power for the purpose of spoil, and plunder. Sambo had prayed ardently for this revelation, and it had come. The scalawag, carpet-bagger, and freedman were parties of the first part, second part and third part in the tripartite agreement, until the negro became the party of no part or the worst part, and he began to mutter to himself in vulgar doggerel:
"Ort is er ort und figger is er figger,All fur de white man und none fur de nigger."
"Ort is er ort und figger is er figger,All fur de white man und none fur de nigger."
When Sambo stole from the store to increase the joint stock-in-trade, the plunder was checked off in the invoice and Sambo was checked off in the penitentiary; if the firm went into liquidation it was because its active and suffering partner went into jail. If the poor negro died with assets the carpet-bagger "sot upon de state" like a carrion-crow upon a putrid body. These human harpies were natural sons of the commune.
The dirty co-partners opened up business in the south, as soon as Sherman's army had crossed the border, under the attractive firm name and style of "The Devil broke loose in Dixie." The iron-hoof of war had so cruelly scathed the bosom of the south that it was like an overripe carbuncle; it requireda little scarifying and savage hands might squeeze and sponge at will.
Credit was prostrate; society was disorganized, treasuries empty; debt like a huge fragment of ice slipping away from the glacier upon the mountain, was gathering volume and momentum as it rolled on and on, and the poor old tottering, reeling country was still struggling on like a bewildered traveller, followed by wolves, and overshadowed by vultures. Corruption and ignorance were the only passports to power. No modern instance of wrong and oppression can approach this Fructidor of the sixties in the South. Human ghouls not so black as these vomited out, the Carbonari of Italy, the Free Companions of France and the Moss Troopers of England.
This condition of things, we dare assert, is without a parallel in the history of any people, in any civilization. Even when Rome was swayed by the keenest lust for conquest and dominion, their legions conquered the barbaric states, not to degrade or destroy, but to attach them to her invincible arms. Savage vengeance never went so far as to place the slave above the master by way of retribution. This was the exciting cause that brought into fullest display the natural law of reprisals and retaliations upon the part of the Southern people.
The first prominent cause of public disturbance of which the carpet-baggers were the authors was a most thorough and secret organization of the negroes in all the counties into Loyal Leagues; in many instances armed and adopting all the formula of signs, pass-words and grips of an oath bound secret organization. When the negro is asked why he votes the Republican ticket his simple answer always is, "Why Lor bress your soul Marsa, we swo to do dat in de League." That simple answerby this new suffragist, this new automaton of the ballot, is a full explanation of the political solidity of the negro vote: With such an element to work upon, ignorant and degraded, the carpet-baggers, fierce and rapacious, have found themselves in Mahomet's seventh heaven in the South.
It is a subject of interest and maybe of admonition to the people North and South, how political institutions, in an age of the highest civilization and under the most explicit constitutional forms, may be changed or abolished by a process of partisan policy, when inaugurated in a spirit of hate, revenge or avarice. Pseudo-philanthropists may talk never so eloquently about an "equality before the law" when equality is not found in the great natural law of race ordained by the Creator. That cannot be changed by statute which has been irrevocably fixed by the fiat of the Almighty. The result of this mongrel combination of carpet-bagger, scalawag and negro; this composition of vice and ignorance and rapacity, was plainly seen everywhere. Robbery and public plunder were rampant in the State capital. The expenses of government were at once increased five hundred per cent. Verily the pregnant suggestion of the carpet-bagger that the only way to bring down the white people of the South to the level of the negro was to tax them down, was carried out with a sweeping vengeance. These thieves and robbers, who had fastened themselves like vampires upon the public treasury, and unlike the leach, did not let go their hold when full, were still gorging themselves by new methods of plunder. No such rate of taxation upon the same basis of property valuation has ever occurred in the history of the world. A tithe of this rate of taxation lost to the crown of England her thirteen American colonies. All the county auditors, county treasurers, trialjustices in the courts of record were utterly incompetent and utterly corrupt. The juries in the courts of records were mostly negroes, summoned by negro sheriffs, and the pardoning power in the hands of venal and truculent governors was shamefully prostituted. The most unblushing villainies and crimes were either officially condoned or remitted and forgiven.
The people were taxed by millions; millions were paid out, and no vouchers were ever taken or found.
In the face of such universal misrule, speculation and tyranny, there could be no greater misrepresentation of the truth than is contained in the oft-reiterated accusation, that the white people of the South are fierce, aggressive and defiant in their conduct towards those placed in authority over them by the Federal or State law. Aggressive and defiant! How vain and worse than useless would such conduct be against the overwhelming power of the tyrants who oppose them. It is against all the instincts of life, when despair has taken the place of hope.
Defiant? Does the poor unresisting hare, when trembling with frenzied apprehension under the feet and wide open jaws of the hound exhibit much defiance, or much hope of victory in a death struggle with its cruel and merciless foe? It makes no resistance—no motion or attitude of battle for life except that involuntary and spasmodic action produced by pain and suffering.
Ef yu wus to brake loose und drap, yu'd bust up ebery scallyhorg in de Souf.
The development of the negro, educationally, has been embarrassed by natural causes that he has been unable to overcome. In a great variety of instances he has failed to be actuated by an intellectual or benevolent reason. In the evolution of the negro from a savage to a slave, from a slave to a freedman, and from a freedman to a citizen, only in exceptional instances has he been able to originate a theory or experiment that has been profitable to himself or others. No high state of civilization has ever originated from them. History teaches us that a nation may pass through an ascending or descending career. It may, by long-continued discipline, exhibit a general, mental advance; or it may go through other demoralizing processes, until it descends to the very bottom of animal existence.
Man is distributed throughout the earth in various conditions: in temperate zones he presents the civilization of Europe and America; in torrid zones the ignorance and nakedness of the African. It was out of the stewpan of the equator that the negro was fished—with all the features and instincts of a barbarism, from which he is slowly emerging—by cruel and irresponsible traders. The religious ideals of the negro are vague and indeterminate. They are intensely superstitious, and believe, as their ancestors before them, in sorcery and witchcraft. Although their powers of origination are inefficient, they readily imitate the manners, customs and idiosyncracies of their masters, and frequentlyexhibit a superficial polish. They are emotional rather than practical in their religion. They are not naturally revengeful or vindictive, and they have shown a sentiment of gratitude that greatly endeared them to their owners. When war was flagrant, and they felt that it was waged for their emancipation—that the institution of slavery was menaced by Federal arms, in unnumbered instances they held in sacred trust millions of dollars worth of property and the lives of thousands of defenseless human beings, who held over them, without challenge, the rod of domestic government.
Under all exasperating causes up to and during the war, hundreds of slaves remained loyal to the interests and authority of their masters.
Conditions, however, highly inflammatory, developed passions that made them brutish, dishonest and cruel. Their emotional religion and their prejudices acted concurrently. The carpet-bagger found these unlighted fagots distributed everywhere throughout the South; he had only to entice them by delusive promises; he had only to say to them, "Will you be slaves, or freedmen?"—to put into their hands a new commission, and into their hearts a new faith, differentiated from the old in order to kindle the fires of hate and revenge.
The Freedman's Bureau in the South was the nineteenth century Apocalypse—a revelation truly to the poor negroes, who had devoutly longed for its coming. The event, they thought, would be distinguished by their sudden enrichment; its huge commissariat would leak from every pore with the oil of fatness; officials, patient and sympathetic, would stand at its portals to distribute pensions and subsistence, and the star-spangled banner waving from the masthead would bow its welcome to all who came. Something for nothing was their great law of reciprocity. Four million slaves fastenedthemselves like barnacles upon this odious institution, an extremely partisan agency, deadly and inimical—hostile to the peace of the South and the interests of her people. These slaves, maddened by their misery, looked back upon the ruined plantations, and laughed when they felt that the whirlwind of retribution had swept over the land.
Aleck, a former slave of Colonel Seymour, but whose rebellion to the slightest authority had latterly been shown by expressions cruel and insulting, and who affected a social equality with the carpet-baggers, halloed over the picket fence in the small hours of the night, to Johua, who was now eighty years of age:
"Hay, dar, yu franksized woter! hez yu heerd de news, ur is yu pine plank ceasded? Hay, dar, Joshaway! De bero man is dun und riv wid de munny, und he lows dat he is ergwine ter penshun off de ole isshu niggers fust."
"Aye, aye!" exclaimed Joshua, almost mechanically, as he aroused himself with an effort, and rubbed the sleep out of his dimmed eyes, "Don't you heer dat, Hanner?" he asked his old wife. "Ergwine to penshun off de ole isshu niggers fust! Grate Jarryko! Who dat er woicin' dat hebbenly pocklermashun outen dar in de shank o' de night? Haint dat yu, brudder Wiggins?"
"Yaw," Aleck replied, "dis is me, sho. De bero man hez dun und sont me to norate dis pocklermashun to you und Ned."
"Grate Jarryko!" exclaimed Joshua, again excitedly. "Hanner," he continued, "ef yu ever seed a cricket hop spry 'pon de hath, jess watch dis heer ole isshu jump inter his gyarments."
As the negro was groping about in the dark for his ragged clothes he said half parenthetically, "Dat dare voice fetches to my membrunce de scripturagen, whay hit says "Fling yo bred into de warter und hit is ergwine to cum out a ho cake." Yu is er shoutin', sliding-baccurd mefodis Hanner und don't pin yo fafe to providence but to grace, und grace is ergwine to keep you perpendikkler in Filadelfy meeting-house, but hit haint ergwine to fetch no horg meat nur taters nudder, dis side of de crick. Hit wur providence dat fotched dat bero man into de souf-land wid de munny to de ole lams of de flock. Don't yu see?"
"I sez ole lams," snapped Hannah; "ef day wuz de onliest wuns gwine to be penshunned off, yu'd be stark nekked as er buzzard, kase yu is dun un backslewed wusser dan a scaly horg."
"Grate Jarryko!" ejaculated Joshua, "How's a mishunnary ergwine to back slew, tell me dat? Kase you jined Filadelfy church, you haint got all de liggion in de world. Dare's Zion und dare's Massedony und dare's de baptizin crick und den dares fafe und providence. Don't you see Hannah? I'm ergwine to ax yu enudder pint rite dare," continued Joshua. "Who dat way back yander in the dissart, dat de good Lord fed wid ravens, when de rashuns gin out? Pend upon it, dat woice out yander imitates de woice of the proffit Heckerlijer, dat flung his leg outen jint, er tusselling wid de harkangel."
"Twant Heckerlijer" answered Hannah sharply, as she threw a splinter of lightwood upon the embers. "Yu's allus a mysterfying de scriptures when yu's er spashiatin erbout dem proffets; yu haint never heerd no such a passage as dat from de circus rider, nur de slidin elder nudder; ef dat cum outer de scriptur, hits by und 'twixt de misshunaries, und day is fell frum grace same as yu."
"Now yu's acting scornful agen de misshunarys" replied Joshua contemptuously, "Ef you ever gits to hebben, let me pete dat ergin; I sez, ef you evergets to hebben yu's ergwine to hole a argyment wid de possel Joner, und den yu's ergwine to be flung outen de gate."
"Whay did yu get dat possell frum?" asked Hannah with irritation. "Whicherway is de sebben starrs Joshua?" She asked as she changed the subject.
"Day is skew-west over yander," said Joshua as he went to the door to look out into the night; "Und bress de Lord" he continued, "peers lak day is a nussing de bero man und de munny er standin' disserway purpundikkler, fo und aft?"
"Is yu ergwine to de town und hit pitch dark?" enquired Hannah. "How in de name of Gord is yu gwine to get to de tuther eend of de crick, und yu bline ez a sand mole flung outer de ground?"
"Now yu's er flingin' a damper on my ambishun ergin. How's I ergwine to fetch de munny back epseps I gits to the tuther eend?" asked Joshua crustily. "Duz yu speck me to slew frum wun eend to the tuther lak a skeeter hork? Tell me dat."
"Lors a massy" he cried out in pain, as he danced around the room on one foot, "fur de hebbins sake fling dat ole free-legged cheer outer dis house into de mash. Grate Jarryko! de debble has sho got hisself tangled up wid de harrydatterments of dis house. Yu mouter knowed dat pizened cussed impelment was ergwine to cum in contack wid sum of my jints."
"Yu jess nuss dat ole hoof of yourn in boff hands lak dat," said Hannah provokingly "twell I strikes a lite und den I'm ergwine to clap fur yu to dance er misshunery reel."
"Don't tanterlize me no mo Hanner wid dem reels und me in all dis rack und missury! Grate Jarryko! Dis heer ole happy sack haint ergwine tohole all dat munny," observed Joshua, after a moment and still groaning with pain.
"Den you mout take de bofat, und de blu chiss, und den dare's de wheel borrer und de steer kyart. Fetch all yu kin Joshaway, fur me und yu is ergwine to need hit every bit und grane. Dat ole beaver of yourn wid de tip eend er flipperty-flopity disserway und datterway, same ez a kyte in de gale is jamby gin out, und den dares de lan, und de grate house, und de hosses und de kerrige, und de peanny forty, und de kalliker kote, und de snuff, und—und—"
"'Don't fling no mo unds—unds—at me," interrupted Joshua in disgust, "epsep yu aims fur me to drap rite back into de bed, whay I wur wen de proklermashun isshued."
Hannah made no answer to this effusion of temper, but going slyly to an old chest in the corner, she took from it a bottle containing a gill or more of ardent spirits and giving it to the old negro, said, "Anint dat ole jint wid dis good truck, Joshaway, hit will swage de missury."
Joshua looked up with a countenance beaming like the full moon coming out of a black cloud, and playfully said to his old wife, "Honey I kin swage de missury mo better disser way;" drank it down and then exclaimed, "Bress God, dat sarchin pain is dun und gon."
"Dont you forget honey," said Joshua again, patronizingly as he was about stepping out of the door with his stick and haversack, "dat nex Saddy, arter dis Saddy cummin, dem dare high steppers dats gwine to cum home wid me dis arternoon is ergwine to raise a harry kane 'twixt dis house und de federick sammyterry whay old Semo und dat secesh gubberner is ergwine to preach de funeral of ole Ginurul Bellion, lately ceasded, und when me und yu gits into de kerrige, great Jarryko!I'm ergwine to hole dem rones disserway, und whern day gits 'twixt de flatform und ole glory, I'm ergwine to histe 'em up on dare hine legs, jess so, see!"
Old Hannah clapped her hands with joy and laughed again and again "Bress Gord" she exclaimed with excitement; "yu is same ez a yurling colt yoself Joshaway, I'm ergwine to give yu a moufful of fodder and shet yu up wid de steer, kase de way yu's a histing up yo rare legs und er chompin' de bit, yu's ergwine to eat up de gyarden sass same as de steer."
Joshua looked scornfully at his wife and observed with a fierce scowl, "Day haint no passifyin' wun of dese backslewed mefodiss epseps yu's er totin every bit of de strane yoself, fo I gits back wid de kerrige und de hosses," he continued quite earnestly "Yu mout move all de harry detaments outen de house, ready fur de grate house, und yu mont rent dis house to ole Semo pervidin' he pays de rent, und you mout turn de munny over to de darters of de sammytary siety."
"Ugh! Ugh! I heers yu; fetch dem nales und de snuff Joshaway!" Hannah halloed as Joshua now in a good humor limped away in the darkness singing merily;