To Whom It May Concern:As Moses lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness for the enlightenment of the people, even so have I lifted twenty shining plunks out of this benighted nigger! Selah!
To Whom It May Concern:
As Moses lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness for the enlightenment of the people, even so have I lifted twenty shining plunks out of this benighted nigger! Selah!
As Uncle Aleck walked away with Aunt Cindy shouting in derision, “Dar, now! Dar, now!” the bow in his legs seemed to have sprung a sharper curve.
CHAPTER VIA Whisper in the Crowd
The excitement which preceded the first Reconstruction election in the South paralyzed the industries of the country. When demagogues poured down from the North and began their raving before crowds of ignorant negroes, the plow stopped in the furrow, the hoe was dropped, and the millennium was at hand.
Negro tenants, working under contracts issued by the Freedman’s Bureau, stopped work, and rode their landlords’ mules and horses around the county, following these orators.
The loss to the cotton crop alone from the abandonment of the growing plant was estimated at over $60,000,000.
The one thing that saved the situation from despair was the large grain and forage crops of the previous season which thrifty farmers had stored in their barns. So important was the barn and its precious contents that Dr. Cameron hired Jake to sleep in his.
This immense barn, which was situated at the foot of the hill some two hundred yards behind the house, had become a favourite haunt of Marion and Hugh. She had made a pet of the beautiful thoroughbred mare which had belonged to Ben during the war. Marion went every day to give her an apple or lump of sugar, orcarry her a bunch of clover. The mare would follow her about like a cat.
Another attraction at the barn for them was Becky Sharpe, Ben’s setter. She came to Marion one morning, wagging her tail, seized her dress and led her into an empty stall, where beneath the trough lay sleeping snugly ten little white-and-black spotted puppies.
The girl had never seen such a sight before and went into ecstasies. Becky wagged her tail with pride at her compliments. Every morning she would pull her gently into the stall just to hear her talk and laugh and pet her babies.
Whatever election day meant to the men, to Marion it was one of unalloyed happiness: she was to ride horseback alone and dance at her first ball. Ben had taught her to ride, and told her she could take Queen to Lover’s Leap and back alone. Trembling with joy, her beautiful face wreathed in smiles, she led the mare to the pond in the edge of the lot and watched her drink its pure spring water.
When he helped her to mount in front of the hotel under her mother’s gaze, and saw her ride out of the gate, with the exquisite lines of her little figure melting into the graceful lines of the mare’s glistening form, he exclaimed:
“I declare, I don’t know which is the prettier, Marion or Queen!”
“I know,” was the mother’s soft answer.
“They are both thoroughbreds,” said Ben, watching them admiringly.
“Wait till you see her to-night in her first ball dress,” whispered Mrs. Lenoir.
At noon Ben and Phil strolled to the polling-place to watch the progress of the first election under negro rule. The Square was jammed with shouting, jostling, perspiring negroes, men, women, and children. The day was warm, and the African odour was supreme even in the open air.
A crowd of two hundred were packed around a peddler’s box. There were two of them—one crying the wares, and the other wrapping and delivering the goods. They were selling a new patent poison for rats.
“I’ve only a few more bottles left now, gentlemen,” he shouted, “and the polls will close at sundown. A great day for our brother in black. Two years of army rations from the Freedman’s Bureau, with old army clothes thrown in, and now the ballot—the priceless glory of American citizenship. But better still the very land is to be taken from these proud aristocrats and given to the poor down-trodden black man. Forty acres and a mule—think of it! Provided, mind you—that you have a bottle of my wonder-worker to kill the rats and save your corn for the mule. No man can have the mule unless he has corn; and no man can have corn if he has rats—and only a few bottles left——”
“Gimme one,” yelled a negro.
“Forty acres and a mule, your old masters to work your land and pay his rent in corn, while you sit back in the shade and see him sweat.”
“Gimme er bottle and two er dem pictures!” bawled another candidate for a mule.
The peddler handed him the bottle and the pictures and threw a handful of his labels among the crowd. These labels happened to be just the size of the ballots, having on them the picture of a dead rat lying on his back, and above, the emblem of death, the crossbones and skull.
“Forty acres and a mule for every black man—why was I ever born white? I never had no luck, nohow!”
Phil and Ben passed on nearer the polling-place, around which stood a cordon of soldiers with a line of negro voters two hundred yards in length extending back into the crowd.
The negro Leagues came in armed battalions and voted in droves, carrying their muskets in their hands. Less than a dozen white men were to be seen about the place.
The negroes, under the drill of the League and the Freedman’s Bureau, protected by the bayonet, were voting to enfranchise themselves, disfranchise their former masters, ratify a new constitution, and elect a legislature to do their will. Old Aleck was a candidate for the House, chief poll-holder, and seemed to be in charge of the movements of the voters outside the booth as well as inside. He appeared to be omnipresent, and his self-importance was a sight Phil had never dreamed. He could not keep his eyes off him.
“By George, Cameron, he’s a wonder!” he laughed.
Aleck had suppressed as far as possible the story of the painted stakes and the deed, after sending out warnings to the brethren to beware of two enticing strangers. The surveyors had reaped a rich harvest and passed on. Aleck made up his mind to go to Columbia, make the laws himself, and never again trust a white man from the Northor South. The agent of the Freedman’s Bureau at Piedmont tried to choke him off the ticket. The League backed him to a man. He could neither read nor write, but before he took to whiskey he had made a specialty of revival exhortation, and his mouth was the most effective thing about him. In this campaign he was an orator of no mean powers. He knew what he wanted, and he knew what his people wanted, and he put the thing in words so plain that a wayfaring man, though a fool, couldn’t make any mistake about it.
As he bustled past, forming a battalion of his brethren in line to march to the polls, Phil followed his every movement with amused interest.
Besides being so bow-legged that his walk was a moving joke he was so striking a negro in his personal appearance, he seemed to the young Northerner almost a distinct type of man.
His head was small and seemed mashed on the sides until it bulged into a double lobe behind. Even his ears, which he had pierced and hung with red earbobs, seemed to have been crushed flat to the side of his head. His kinked hair was wrapped in little hard rolls close to the skull and bound tightly with dirty thread. His receding forehead was high and indicated a cunning intelligence. His nose was broad and crushed flat against his face. His jaws were strong and angular, mouth wide, and lips thick, curling back from rows of solid teeth set obliquely in their blue gums. The one perfect thing about him was the size and setting of his mouth—he was a born African orator, undoubtedly descended from a long lineof savage spell-binders, whose eloquence in the palaver houses of the jungle had made them native leaders. His thin spindle-shanks supported an oblong, protruding stomach, resembling an elderly monkey’s, which seemed so heavy it swayed his back to carry it.
The animal vivacity of his small eyes and the flexibility of his eyebrows, which he worked up and down rapidly with every change of countenance, expressed his eager desires.
He had laid aside his new shoes, which hurt him, and went barefooted to facilitate his movements on the great occasion. His heels projected and his foot was so flat that what should have been the hollow of it made a hole in the dirt where he left his track.
He was already mellow with liquor, and was dressed in an old army uniform and cap, with two horse pistols buckled around his waist. On a strap hanging from his shoulder were strung a half-dozen tin canteens filled with whiskey.
A disturbance in the line of voters caused the young men to move forward to see what it meant.
Two negro troopers had pulled Jake out of the line, and were dragging him toward old Aleck.
The election judge straightened himself up with great dignity:
“What wuz de rapscallion doin’?”
“In de line, tryin’ ter vote.”
“Fetch ’im befo’ de judgment bar,” said Aleck, taking a drink from one of his canteens.
The troopers brought Jake before the judge.
“Tryin’ ter vote, is yer?”
“’Lowed I would.”
“You hear ’bout de great sassieties de Gubment’s fomentin’ in dis country?”
“Yas, I hear erbout ’em.”
“Is yer er member er de Union League?”
“Na-sah. I’d rudder steal by myself. I doan’ lak too many in de party!”
“En yer ain’t er No’f Ca’liny gemmen, is yer—yer ain’t er member er de ‘Red Strings?’”
“Na-sah, I come when I’se called—dey doan’ hatter put er string on me—ner er block, ner er collar, ner er chain, ner er muzzle——”
“Will yer ’splain ter dis cote——” railed Aleck.
“What cote? Dat ole army cote?” Jake laughed in loud peals that rang over the square.
Aleck recovered his dignity and demanded angrily:
“Does yer belong ter de Heroes ob Americky?”
“Na-sah. I ain’t burnt nobody’s house ner barn yet, ner hamstrung no stock, ner waylaid nobody atter night—honey, I ain’t fit ter jine. Heroes ob Americky! Is you er hero?”
“Ef yer doan’ b’long ter no s’iety,” said Aleck with judicial deliberation, “what is you?”
“Des er ole-fashun all-wool-en-er-yard-wide nigger dat stan’s by his ole marster ’cause he’s his bes’ frien’, stays at home, en tends ter his own business.”
“En yer pay no ’tenshun ter de orders I sent yer ter jine de League?”
“Na-sah. I ain’t er takin’ orders f’um er skeer-crow.”
Aleck ignored his insolence, secure in his power.
“You doan b’long ter no s’iety, what yer git in dat line ter vote for?”
“Ain’t I er nigger?”
“But yer ain’t de right kin’ er nigger. ‘Res’ dat man fer ‘sturbin’ de peace.”
They put Jake in jail, persuaded his wife to leave him, and expelled him from the Baptist church, all within the week.
As the troopers led Jake to prison, a young negro apparently about fifteen years old approached Aleck, holding in his hand one of the peddler’s rat labels, which had gotten well distributed among the crowd. A group of negro boys followed him with these rat labels in their hands, studying them intently.
“Look at dis ticket, Uncle Aleck,” said the leader.
“Mr. Alexander Lenoir, sah—is I yo’ uncle, nigger?”
The youth walled his eyes angrily.
“Den doan’ you call me er nigger!”
“Who’ yer talkin to, sah? You kin fling yer sass at white folks, but, honey, yuse er projeckin’ wid death now!”
“I ain’t er nigger—I’se er gemman, I is,” was the sullen answer.
“How ole is you?” asked Aleck in milder tones.
“Me mudder say sixteen—but de Buro man say I’se twenty-one yistiddy, de day ‘fo’ ’lection.”
“Is you voted to-day?”
“Yessah; vote in all de boxes ‘cept’n dis one. Look at dat ticket. Is dat de straight ticket?”
Aleck, who couldn’t read the twelve-inch letters of his favourite bar-room sign, took the rat label and examined it critically.
“What ail it?” he asked at length.
The boy pointed at the picture of the rat.
“What dat rat doin’, lyin’ dar on his back, wid his heels cocked up in de air—’pear ter me lak a rat otter be standin’ on his feet!”
Aleck reëxamined it carefully, and then smiled benignly on the youth.
“De ignance er dese folks. What ud yer do widout er man lak me enjued wid de sperit en de power ter splain tings?”
“You sho’ got de sperits,” said the boy impudently, touching a canteen.
Aleck ignored the remark and looked at the rat label smilingly.
“Ain’t we er votin’, ter-day, on de Constertooshun what’s ter take de ballot away f’um de white folks en gib all de power ter de cullud gemmen—I axes yer dat?”
The boy stuck his thumbs under his arms and walled his eyes.
“Yessah!”
“Den dat means de ratification ob de Constertooshun!”
Phil laughed, followed, and watched them fold their tickets, get in line, and vote the rat labels.
Ben turned toward a white man with gray beard, who stood watching the crowd.
He was a pious member of the Presbyterian church but his face didn’t have a pious expression to-day. He hadbeen refused the right to vote because he had aided the Confederacy by nursing one of his wounded boys.
He touched his hat politely to Ben.
“What do you think of it, Colonel Cameron?” he asked with a touch of scorn.
“What’s your opinion, Mr. McAllister?”
“Well, Colonel, I’ve been a member of the church for over forty years. I’m not a cussin’ man—but there’s a sight I never expected to live to see. I’ve been a faithful citizen of this State for fifty years. I can’t vote, and a nigger is to be elected to-day to represent me in the Legislature. Neither you, Colonel, nor your father are good enough to vote. Every nigger in this county sixteen years old and up voted to-day—I ain’t a cussing man, and I don’t say it as a cuss word, but all I’ve got to say is, IF there BE such a thing as a d—d shame—that’s it!”
“Mr. McAllister, the recording angel wouldn’t have made a mark had you said it without the ‘IF.’”
“God knows what this country’s coming to—I don’t,” said the old man bitterly. “I’m afraid to let my wife and daughter go out of the house, or stay in it, without somebody with them.”
Ben leaned closer and whispered, as Phil approached:
“Come to my office to-night at ten o’clock; I want to see you on some important business.”
The old man seized his hand eagerly.
“Shall I bring the boys?”
Ben smiled.
“No. I’ve seen them some time ago.”
CHAPTER VIIBy the Light of a Torch
On the night of the election Mrs. Lenoir gave a ball at the hotel in honour of Marion’s entrance into society. She was only in her sixteenth year, yet older than her mother when mistress of her own household. The only ambition the mother cherished was that she might win the love of an honest man and build for herself a beautiful home on the site of the cottage covered with trailing roses. In this home dream for Marion she found a great sustaining joy to which nothing in the life of man answers.
The ball had its political significance which the military martinet who commanded the post understood. It was the way the people of Piedmont expressed to him and the world their contempt for the farce of an election he had conducted, and their indifference as to the result he would celebrate with many guns before midnight.
The young people of the town were out in force. Marion was a universal favourite. The grace, charm, and tender beauty of the Southern girl of sixteen were combined in her with a gentle and unselfish disposition. Amid poverty that was pitiful, unconscious of its limitations, her thoughts were always of others, and she was the one human being everybody had agreed to love. In the villagein which she lived wealth counted for naught. She belonged to the aristocracy of poetry, beauty, and intrinsic worth, and her people knew no other.
As she stood in the long dining-room, dressed in her first ball costume of white organdy and lace, the little plump shoulders peeping through its meshes, she was the picture of happiness. A half-dozen boys hung on every word as the utterance of an oracle. She waved gently an old ivory fan with white down on its edges in a way the charm of which is the secret birthright of every Southern girl.
Now and then she glanced at the door for some one who had not yet appeared.
Phil paid his tribute to her with genuine feeling, and Marion repaid him by whispering:
“Margaret’s dressed to kill—all in soft azure blue—her rosy cheeks, black hair, and eyes never shone as they do to-night. She doesn’t dance on account of her Sunday-school—it’s all for you.”
Phil blushed and smiled.
“The preacher won’t be here?”
“Our rector will.”
“He’s a nice old gentleman. I’m fond of him. Miss Marion, your mother is a genius. I hope she can plan these little affairs oftener.”
It was half-past ten o’clock when Ben Cameron entered the room with Elsie a little ruffled at his delay over imaginary business at his office. Ben answered her criticisms with a strange elation. She had felt a secret between them and resented it.
At Mrs. Lenoir’s special request, he had put on his full uniform of a Confederate Colonel in honour of Marion and the poem her father had written of one of his gallant charges. He had not worn it since he fell that day in Phil’s arms.
No one in the room had ever seen him in this Colonel’s uniform. Its yellow sash with the gold fringe and tassels was faded and there were two bullet holes in the coat. A murmur of applause from the boys, sighs and exclamations from the girls swept the room as he took Marion’s hand, bowed and kissed it. Her blue eyes danced and smiled on him with frank admiration.
“Ben, you’re the handsomest thing I’ve ever seen!” she said softly.
“Thanks. I thought you had a mirror. I’ll send you one,” he answered, slipping his arm around her and gliding away to the strains of a waltz. The girl’s hand trembled as she placed it on his shoulder, her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes had a wistful dreamy look in their depths.
When Ben rejoined Elsie and they strolled on the lawn, the military commandant suddenly confronted them with a squad of soldiers.
“I’ll trouble you for those buttons and shoulder straps,” said the Captain.
Elsie’s amber eyes began to spit fire. Ben stood still and smiled.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“That I will not be insulted by the wearing of this uniform to-day.”
“I dare you to touch it, coward, poltroon!” cried the girl, her plump little figure bristling in front of her lover.
Ben laid his hand on her arm and gently drew her back to his side: “He has the power to do this. It is a technical violation of law to wear them. I have surrendered. I am a gentleman and I have been a soldier. He can have his tribute. I’ve promised my father to offer no violence to the military authority of the United States.”
He stepped forward, and the officer cut the buttons from his coat and ripped the straps from his shoulders.
While the performance was going on, Ben quietly said:
“General Grant at Appomattox, with the instincts of a great soldier, gave our men his spare horses and ordered that Confederate officers retain their side-arms. The General is evidently not in touch with this force.”
“No: I’m in command in this county,” said the Captain.
“Evidently.”
When he had gone, Elsie’s eyes were dim. They strolled under the shadow of the great oak and stood in silence, listening to the music within and the distant murmur of the falls.
“Why is it, sweetheart, that a girl will persist in admiring brass buttons?” Ben asked softly.
She raised her lips to his for a kiss and answered:
“Because a soldier’s business is to die for his country.”
As Ben led her back into the ballroom and surrendered her to a friend for a dance, the first gun pealed its note of victory from the square in the celebration of the triumph of the African slave over his white master.
Ben strolled out in the street to hear the news.
The Constitution had been ratified by an enormous majority, and a Legislature elected composed of 101 negroes and 23 white men. Silas Lynch had been elected Lieutenant-Governor, a negro Secretary of State, a negro Treasurer, and a negro Justice of the Supreme Court.
When Bizzel, the wizzen-faced agent of the Freedman’s Bureau, made this announcement from the courthouse steps, pandemonium broke lose. An incessant rattle of musketry began in which ball cartridges were used, the missiles whistling over the town in every direction. Yet within half an hour the square was deserted and a strange quiet followed the storm.
Old Aleck staggered by the hotel, his drunkenness having reached the religious stage.
“Behold, a curiosity, gentlemen,” cried Ben to a group of boys who had gathered, “a voter is come among us—in fact, he is the people, the king, our representative elect, the Honourable Alexander Lenoir, of the county of Ulster!”
“Gemmens, de Lawd’s bin good ter me,” said Aleck, weeping copiously.
“They say the rat labels were in a majority in this precinct—how was that?” asked Ben.
“Yessah—dat what de scornful say—dem dat sets in de seat o’ de scornful, but de Lawd er Hosts He fetch ’em low. Mistah Bissel de Buro man count all dem rat votes right, sah—dey couldn’t fool him—he know what dey mean—he count ’em all for me an’ de ratification.”
“Sure-pop!” said Ben; “if you can’t ratify with a rat, I’d like to know why?”
“Dat’s what I tells ’em, sah.”
“Of course,” said Ben good-humouredly. “The voice of the people is the voice of God—rats or no rats—if you know how to count.”
As old Aleck staggered away, the sudden crash of a volley of musketry echoed in the distance.
“What’s that?” asked Ben, listening intently. The sound was unmistakable to a soldier’s ear—that volley from a hundred rifles at a single word of command. It was followed by a shot on a hill in the distance, and then by a faint echo, farther still. Ben listened a few moments and turned into the lawn of the hotel. The music suddenly stopped, the tramp of feet echoed on the porch, a woman screamed, and from the rear of the house came the cry:
“Fire! Fire!”
Almost at the same moment an immense sheet of flame shot skyward from the big barn.
“My God!” groaned Ben. “Jake’s in jail to-night, and they’ve set the barn on fire. It’s worth more than the house.”
The crowd rushed down the hill to the blazing building, Marion’s fleet figure in its flying white dress leading the crowd.
The lowing of the cows and the wild neighing of the horses rang above the roar of the flames.
Before Ben could reach the spot Marion had opened every stall. Two cows leaped out to safety, but not ahorse would move from its stall, and each moment wilder and more pitiful grew their death cries.
Marion rushed to Ben, her eyes dilated, her face as white as the dress she wore.
“Oh, Ben, Queen won’t come out! What shall I do?”
“You can do nothing, child. A horse won’t come out of a burning stable unless he’s blindfolded. They’ll all be burned to death.”
“Oh! no!” the girl cried in agony.
“They’d trample you to death if you tried to get them out. It can’t be helped. It’s too late.”
As Ben looked back at the gathering crowd, Marion suddenly snatched a horse blanket, lying at the door, ran with the speed of a deer to the pond, plunged in, sprang out, and sped back to the open door of Queen’s stall, through which her shrill cry could be heard above the others.
As the girl ran toward the burning building, her thin white dress clinging close to her exquisite form, she looked like the marble figure of a sylph by the hand of some great master into which God had suddenly breathed the breath of life.
As they saw her purpose, a cry of horror rose from the crowd, her mother’s scream loud above the rest.
Ben rushed to catch her, shouting:
“Marion! Marion! She’ll trample you to death!”
He was too late. She leaped into the stall. The crowd held their breath. There was a moment of awful suspense, and the mare sprang through the open door with the little white figure clinging to her mane and holding the blanket over her head.
A cheer rang above the roar of the flames. The girl did not loose her hold until her beautiful pet was led to a place of safety, while she clung to her neck and laughed and cried for joy. First her mother, then Margaret, Mrs. Cameron, and Elsie took her in their arms.
As Ben approached the group, Elsie whispered to him: “Kiss her!”
Ben took her hand, his eyes full of unshed tears, and said:
“The bravest deed a woman ever did—you’re a heroine, Marion!”
Before she knew it he stooped and kissed her.
She was very still for a moment, smiled, trembled from head to foot, blushed scarlet, took her mother by the hand, and without a word hurried to the house.
Poor Becky was whining among the excited crowd and sought in vain for Marion. At last she got Margaret’s attention, caught her dress in her teeth and led her to a corner of the lot, where she had laid side by side her puppies, smothered to death. She stood and looked at them with her tail drooping, the picture of despair. Margaret burst into tears and called Ben.
He bent and put his arm around the setter’s neck and stroked her head with his hand. Looking at up his sister, he said:
“Don’t tell Marion of this. She can’t stand any more to-night.”
The crowd had all dispersed, and the flames had died down for want of fuel. The odour of roasting flesh, pungent and acrid, still lingered a sharp reminder of the tragedy.
Ben stood on the back porch, talking in low tones to his father.
“Will you join us now, sir? We need the name and influence of men of your standing.”
“My boy, two wrongs never made a right. It’s better to endure awhile. The sober commonsense of the Nation will yet save us. We must appeal to it.”
“Eight more fires were seen from town to-night.”
“You only guess their origin.”
“I know their origin. It was done by the League at a signal as a celebration of the election and a threat of terror to the county. One of our men concealed a faithful negro under the floor of the school-house and heard the plot hatched. We expected it a month ago—but hoped they had given it up.”
“Even so, my boy, a secret society such as you have planned means a conspiracy that may bring exile or death. I hate lawlessness and disorder. We have had enough of it. Your clan means ultimately martial law. At least we will get rid of these soldiers by this election. They have done their worst to me, but we may save others by patience.”
“It’s the only way, sir. The next step will be a black hand on a white woman’s throat!”
The doctor frowned. “Let us hope for the best. Your clan is the last act of desperation.”
“But if everything else fail, and this creeping horror becomes a fact—then what?”
“My boy, we will pray that God may never let us live to see the day!”
THE BLACK MASTERS OF THE SOUTH DURING RECONSTRUCTION.
THE BLACK MASTERS OF THE SOUTH DURING RECONSTRUCTION.
CHAPTER VIIIThe Riot in the Master’s Hall
Alarmed at the possible growth of the secret clan into which Ben had urged him to enter, Dr. Cameron determined to press for relief from oppression by an open appeal to the conscience of the Nation.
He called a meeting of conservative leaders in a Taxpayers’ Convention at Columbia. His position as leader had been made supreme by the indignities he had suffered, and he felt sure of his ability to accomplish results. Every county in the State was represented by its best men in this gathering at the Capitol.
The day he undertook to present his memorial to the Legislature was one he never forgot. The streets were crowded with negroes who had come to town to hear Lynch, the Lieutenant-Governor, speak in a mass-meeting. Negro policemen swung their clubs in his face as he pressed through the insolent throng up the street to the stately marble Capitol. At the door a black, greasy trooper stopped him to parley. Every decently dressed white man was regarded a spy.
As he passed inside the doors of the House of Representatives the rush of foul air staggered him. The reek of vile cigars and stale whiskey, mingled with the odour ofperspiring negroes, was overwhelming. He paused and gasped for breath.
The space behind the seats of the members was strewn with corks, broken glass, stale crusts, greasy pieces of paper, and picked bones. The hall was packed with negroes, smoking, chewing, jabbering, pushing, perspiring.
A carpet-bagger at his elbow was explaining to an old darkey from down east why his forty acres and a mule hadn’t come.
On the other side of him a big negro bawled:
“Dat’s all right! De cullud man on top!”
The doctor surveyed the hall in dismay. At first not a white member was visible. The galleries were packed with negroes. The Speaker presiding was a negro, the Clerk a negro, the doorkeepers negroes, the little pages all coal-black negroes, the Chaplain a negro. The negro party consisted of one hundred and one—ninety-four blacks and seven scallawags, who claimed to be white. The remains of Aryan civilization were represented by twenty-three white men from the Scotch-Irish hill counties.
The doctor had served three terms as the member from Ulster in this hall in the old days, and its appearance now was beyond any conceivable depth of degradation.
The ninety-four Africans, constituting almost its solid membership, were a motley crew. Every negro type was there, from the genteel butler to the clodhopper from the cotton and rice fields. Some had on second-hand seedy frock-coats their old master had given them before thewar, glossy and threadbare. Old stovepipe hats, of every style in vogue since Noah came out of the ark, were placed conspicuously on the desks or cocked on the backs of the heads of the honourable members. Some wore the coarse clothes of the field, stained with red mud.
Old Aleck, he noted, had a red woollen comforter wound round his neck in place of a shirt or collar. He had tried to go barefooted, but the Speaker had issued a rule that members should come shod. He was easing his feet by placing his brogans under the desk, wearing only his red socks.
Each member had his name painted in enormous gold letters on his desk, and had placed beside it a sixty-dollar French imported spittoon. Even the Congress of the United States, under the inspiration of Oakes Ames and Speaker Colfax, could only afford one of domestic make, which cost a dollar.
The uproar was deafening. From four to six negroes were trying to speak at the same time. Aleck’s majestic mouth with blue gums and projecting teeth led the chorus as he ambled down the aisle, his bow-legs flying their red-sock ensigns.
The Speaker singled him out—his voice was something which simply could not be ignored—rapped and yelled:
“De gemman from Ulster set down!”
Aleck turned crestfallen and resumed his seat, throwing his big flat feet in their red woollens up on his desk and hiding his face behind their enormous spread.
He had barely settled in his chair before a new idea flashed through his head and up he jumped again:
“Mistah Speaker!” he bawled.
“Orda da!” yelled another.
“Knock ’im in de head!”
“Seddown, nigger!”
The Speaker pointed his gavel at Aleck and threatened him laughingly:
“Ef de gemman from Ulster doan set down I gwine call ’im ter orda!”
Uncle Aleck greeted this threat with a wild guffaw, which the whole House about him joined in heartily. They laughed like so many hens cackling—when one started the others would follow.
The most of them were munching peanuts, and the crush of hulls under heavy feet added a subnote to the confusion like the crackle of a prairie fire.
The ambition of each negro seemed to be to speak at least a half-dozen times on each question, saying the same thing every time.
No man was allowed to talk five minutes without an interruption which brought on another and another until the speaker was drowned in a storm of contending yells. Their struggles to get the floor with bawlings, bellowings, and contortions, and the senseless rap of the Speaker’s gavel, were something appalling.
On this scene, through fetid smoke and animal roar, looked down from the walls, in marble bas-relief, the still white faces of Robert Hayne and George McDuffie, through whose veins flowed the blood of Scottish kings, while over it brooded in solemn wonder the face of John Laurens, whose diplomatic genius at the court of Francewon millions of gold for our tottering cause, and sent a French fleet and army into the Chesapeake to entrap Cornwallis at Yorktown.
The little group of twenty-three white men, the descendants of these spirits, to whom Dr. Cameron had brought his memorial, presented a pathetic spectacle. Most of them were old men, who sat in grim silence with nothing to do or say as they watched the rising black tide, their dignity, reserve, and decorum at once the wonder and the shame of the modern world.
At least they knew that the minstrel farce being enacted on that floor was a tragedy as deep and dark as was ever woven of the blood and tears of a conquered people. Beneath those loud guffaws they could hear the death rattle in the throat of their beloved State, barbarism strangling civilization by brute force.
For all the stupid uproar, the black leaders of this mob knew what they wanted. One of them was speaking now, the leader of the House, the Honourable Napoleon Whipper.
Dr. Cameron had taken his seat in the little group of white members in one corner of the chamber, beside an old friend from an adjoining county whom he had known in better days.
“Now listen,” said his friend. “When Whipper talks he always says something.”
“Mr. Speaker, I move you, sir, in view of the arduous duties which our presiding officer has performed this week for the State, that he be allowed one thousand dollars extra pay.”
The motion was put without debate and carried.
The Speaker then called Whipper to the Chair and made the same motion, to give the Leader of the House an extra thousand dollars for the performance of his heavy duties.
It was carried.
“What does that mean?” asked the doctor.
“Very simple; Whipper and the Speaker adjourned the House yesterday afternoon to attend a horse race. They lost a thousand dollars each betting on the wrong horse. They are recuperating after the strain. They are booked for judges of the Supreme Court when they finish this job. The negro mass-meeting to-night is to indorse their names for the Supreme Bench.”
“Is it possible!” the doctor exclaimed.
When Whipper resumed his place at his desk, the introduction of bills began. One after another were sent to the Speaker’s desk, a measure to disarm the whites and equip with modern rifles a negro militia of 80,000 men; to make the uniform of Confederate gray the garb of convicts in South Carolina, with a sign of the rank to signify the degree of crime; to prevent any person calling another a “nigger”; to require men to remove their hats in the presence of all officers, civil or military, and all disfranchised men to remove their hats in the presence of voters; to force black and whites to attend the same schools and open the State University to negroes; to permit the intermarriage of whites and blacks; and to inforce social equality.
Whipper made a brief speech on the last measure:
“Before I am through, I mean that it shall be known that Napoleon Whipper is as good as any man in South Carolina. Don’t tell me that I am not on an equality with any man God ever made.”
Dr. Cameron turned pale, and trembling with excitement, asked his friend:
“Can that man pass such measures, and the Governor sign them?”
“He can pass anything he wishes. The Governor is his creature—a dirty little scallawag who tore the Union flag from Fort Sumter, trampled it in the dust, and helped raise the flag of Confederacy over it. Now he is backed by the Government at Washington. He won his election by dancing at negro balls and the purchase of delegates. His salary as Governor is $3,500 a year, and he spends over $40,000. Comment is unnecessary. This Legislature has stolen millions of dollars, and already bankrupted the treasury. The day Howle was elected to the Senate of the United States every negro on the floor had his roll of bills and some of them counted it out on their desks. In your day the annual cost of the State government was $400,000. This year it is $2,000,000. These thieves steal daily. They don’t deny it. They simply dare you to prove it. The writing paper on the desks cost $16,000. These clocks on the wall $600 each, and every little Radical newspaper in the State has been subsidized in sums varying from $1,000 to $7,000. Each member is allowed to draw for mileage, per diem, and ‘sundries.’ God only knows what the bill for ‘sundries’ will aggregate by the end of the session.”
“I couldn’t conceive of this!” exclaimed the doctor.
“I’ve only given you a hint. We are a conquered race. The iron hand of Fate is on us. We can only wait for the shadows to deepen into night. President Grant appears to be a babe in the woods. Schuyler Colfax, the Vice-president, and Belknap, the Secretary of War, are in the saddle in Washington. I hear things are happening there that are quite interesting. Besides, Congress now can give little relief. The real lawmaking power in America is the State Legislature. The State lawmaker enters into the holy of holies of our daily life. Once more we are a sovereign State—a sovereign negro State.”
“I fear my mission is futile,” said the doctor.
“It’s ridiculous—I’ll call for you to-night and take you to hear Lynch, our Lieutenant-Governor. He is a remarkable man. Our negro Supreme Court Judge will preside—”
Uncle Aleck, who had suddenly spied Dr. Cameron, broke in with a laughing welcome:
“I ’clar ter goodness, Dr. Cammun, I didn’t know you wuz here, sah. I sho’ glad ter see you. I axes yer ter come across de street ter my room; I got sumfin’ pow’ful pertickler ter say ter you.”
The doctor followed Aleck out of the hall and across the street to his room in a little boarding-house. His door was locked, and the windows darkened by blinds. Instead of opening the blinds he lighted a lamp.
“Ob cose, Dr. Cammun, you say nuffin ’bout what I gwine tell you?”
“Certainly not, Aleck.”
The room was full of drygoods boxes. The space under the bed was packed, and they were piled to the ceiling around the walls.
“Why, what’s all this, Aleck?”
The member from Ulster chuckled:
“Dr. Cammun, yu’se been er pow’ful frien’ ter me—gimme medicine lots er times, en I hain’t nebber paid you nuttin’. I’se sho’ come inter de kingdom now, en I wants ter pay my respects ter you, sah. Des look ober dat paper, en mark what you wants, en I hab ’em sont home fur you.”
The member from Ulster handed his physician a printed list of more than five hundred articles of merchandise. The doctor read it over with amazement.
“I don’t understand it, Aleck. Do you own a store?”
“Na-sah, but we git all we wants fum mos’ eny ob ’em. Dem’s ‘sundries,’ sah, dat de Gubment gibs de members. We des orda what we needs. No trouble ’tall, sah. De men what got de goods come roun’ en beg us ter take ’em.”
The doctor smiled in spite of the tragedy back of the joke.
“Let’s see some of the goods, Aleck—are they first class?”
“Yessah; de bes’ goin’. I show you.”
He pulled out a number of boxes and bundles, exhibiting carpets, door mats, hassocks, dog collars, cow bells, oilcloths, velvets, mosquito nets, damask, Irish linen, billiard outfits, towels, blankets, flannels, quilts, women’s hoods, hats, ribbons, pins, needles, scissors, dumb bells,skates, crape skirt braids, tooth brushes, face powder, hooks and eyes, skirts, bustles, chignons, garters, artificial busts, chemises, parasols, watches, jewellery, diamond earrings, ivory-handled knives and forks, pistols and guns, and a Webster’s Dictionary.
“Got lots mo’ in dem boxes nailed up dar—yessah, hit’s no use er lettin’ good tings go by yer when you kin des put out yer han’ en stop ’em! Some er de members ordered horses en carriages, but I tuk er par er fine mules wid harness en two buggies an er wagin. Dey ’roun at de libry stable, sah.”
The doctor thanked Aleck for his friendly feeling, but told him it was, of course, impossible for him at this time, being only a taxpayer and neither a voter nor a member of the Legislature, to share in his supply of “sundries.”
He went to the warehouse that night with his friend to hear Lynch, wondering if his mind were capable of receiving another shock.
This meeting had been called to indorse the candidacy, for Justice of the Supreme Court, of Napoleon Whipper, the Leader of the House, the notorious negro thief and gambler, and of William Pitt Moses, an ex-convict, his confederate in crime. They had been unanimously chosen for the positions by a secret caucus of the ninety-four negro members of the House. This addition to the Court, with the negro already a member, would give a majority to the black man on the last Tribunal of Appeal.
The few white men of the party who had any sense of decency were in open revolt at this atrocity. But their influence was on the wane. The carpet-bagger shapedthe first Convention and got the first plums of office. Now the negro was in the saddle, and he meant to stay. There were not enough white men in the Legislature to force a roll-call on a division of the House. This meeting was an open defiance of all pale-faces inside or outside party lines.
Every inch of space in the big cotton warehouse was jammed—a black living cloud, pungent and piercing.
The distinguished Lieutenant-Governor, Silas Lynch, had not yet arrived, but the negro Justice of the Supreme Court, Pinchback, was in his seat as the presiding officer.
Dr. Cameron watched the movements of the black judge, already notorious for the sale of his opinions, with a sense of sickening horror. This man was but yesterday a slave, his father a medicine man in an African jungle who decided the guilt or innocence of the accused by the test of administering poison. If the poison killed the man, he was guilty; if he survived, he was innocent. For four thousand years his land had stood a solid bulwark of unbroken barbarism. Out of its darkness he had been thrust upon the seat of judgment of the laws of the proudest and highest type of man evolved in time. It seemed a hideous dream.
His thoughts were interrupted by a shout. It came spontaneous and tremendous in its genuine feeling. The magnificent figure of Lynch, their idol, appeared walking down the aisle escorted by the little scallawag who was the Governor.
He took his seat on the platform with the easy assurance of conscious power. His broad shoulders, superbhead, and gleaming jungle eyes held every man in the audience before he had spoken a word.
In the first masterful tones of his voice the doctor’s keen intelligence caught the ring of his savage metal and felt the shock of his powerful personality—a personality which had thrown to the winds every mask, whose sole aim of life was sensual, whose only fears were of physical pain and death, who could worship a snake and sacrifice a human being.
His playful introduction showed him a child of Mystery, moved by Voices and inspired by a Fetish. His face was full of good humour, and his whole figure rippled with sleek animal vivacity. For the moment, life was a comedy and a masquerade teeming with whims, fancies, ecstasies and superstitions.
He held the surging crowd in the hollow of his hand. They yelled, laughed, howled, or wept as he willed.
Now he painted in burning words the imaginary horrors of slavery until the tears rolled down his cheeks and he wept at the sound of his own voice. Every dusky hearer burst into tears and moans.
He stopped, suddenly brushed the tears from his eyes, sprang to the edge of the platform, threw both arms above his head and shouted:
“Hosannah to the Lord God Almighty for Emancipation!”
Instantly five thousand negroes, as one man, were on their feet, shouting and screaming. Their shouts rose in unison, swelled into a thunder peal, and died away as one voice.
Dead silence followed, and every eye was again riveted on Lynch. For two hours the doctor sat transfixed, listening and watching him sway the vast audience with hypnotic power.
There was not one note of hesitation or of doubt. It was the challenge of race against race to mortal combat. His closing words again swept every negro from his seat and melted every voice into a single frenzied shout:
“Within five years,” he cried, “the intelligence and the wealth of this mighty State will be transferred to the negro race. Lift up your heads. The world is yours. Take it. Here and now I serve notice on every white man who breathes that I am as good as he is. I demand, and I am going to have, the privilege of going to see him in his house or his hotel, eating with him and sleeping with him, and when I see fit, to take his daughter in marriage!”
As the doctor emerged from the stifling crowd with his friend, he drew a deep breath of fresh air, took from his pocket his conservative memorial, picked it into little bits, and scattered them along the street as he walked in silence back to his hotel.