THE BROKEN SWORD

This work is respectfully inscribed to the
Daughters of the Confederacy
By the Author,
Who followed, as their fathers did, the "Southern
Cross."

[INDEX.]

[LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.]

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

[INTRODUCTION.]

"I have considered the oppressions that are done under the sun, and on the side of the oppressor there is power."

In the enforcement of the policy of Reconstruction in the South, the evidences were from day to day becoming so cumulative and decisive, that nothing but the discipline of an enraged party, coupled with the "spoils" principle, prevented the whole mass of the community from a universal expression of its desire to have it abandoned. Reasoning men everywhere felt that it must continue to multiply its mischiefs. "But," said its authors, "treason must be made odious, and the late insurrectionary States must feel that there is a higher law than that promulgated by their ordinances of secession."

The Spanish inquisition, now the abhorrence of all enlightened minds, was long sustained in many centuries by the tyrants' plea of necessity. In the burning of a thousand heretics the religious zealot saw the hand of God; in the destruction of a thousand sorcerers, the fanatic discerned the commonweal of the people; so in the whipcords with which the people of the South were so mercilessly scourged, there was found an antiseptic for the gangrenous wounds inflicted by the civil war. All these cruelties were legalized, while bleeding humanity was sinking under the burden of oppression. In the collision of exasperated passions, it is the temper of aggression that always strikes the first blow. The government of the South by carpet-baggers was essentially oppressive and inquisitorial. It was, in its practical operation, a pure and unadulterated despotism, superseding the protection guaranteed by the Federal Constitution to each and every State. It was under the dominion of an organized anarchy, with legislatures and courts of justice, subordinated to a lawless assemblage of unprincipled men calling themselves the representatives and judges of the people. Among its necessarily implied powers was that of confiscation; and numbered in its enumeration of brutalities, was a nameless crime that shocked the moral sense of mankind. Reconstruction came upon the South with fearful impulse.

Perhaps the "hour is on the wing," when a worthier hand will write the history of the institutional age that was sandwiched between the slavery civilization ante-dating the sixties, and that which minimized the pernicious power of manhood suffrage at the close of the century; or perhaps when that remnant that still survives in the weakness of age to

"Weep o'er their wounds, o'er tales of sorrow done.
Shoulder their crutch and show how fields are won."

shall have "passed over the river;" when the threnody of the "olden days" which to us is like the music of Carrol along the hills of Slimora, "pleasant, but mournful to the soul," shall be forgotten, some ambitious youth will uplift the veil; will take a glance of the whole horizon, and the south will unbosom her griefs that have been so long concealed. It will not do for a hand that drew the sword to guide the pen. By a law of our nature all passive impressions impair our moral sensibilities. Contact with misery renders us callous to those experiences; a constant view of vice lessens its deformity. If any expression in this humble narrative shall appear ill-tempered, let me say in the language of Themistocles at the battle of Salamis, "Strike, but hear me." The whole country has long since repudiated the dogma that "all men are born free and equal" and endowed with certain imprescriptible and inalienable rights. This heresy of course found its highest expression in the post-bellum amendments to the constitution, and the remedial statutes which made their efficiency complete. The war was the logical fulfillment of prophecies that had their forecast in the public councils before the nullification doctrine was forced upon the Senate by Mr. Calhoun. It sprang without extraneous aid from uninterpretable expressions in the organic law, which were finally explained away in the effusion of blood. Reconstruction, in the conception of men who provided the sinews of war, was the prolific aftermath; and in this harvest field, the gleaners plied their vocation with merciless activity, reinforced in their villainies by the freedmen, who, in an experimental way, were publicly evincing their unfitness for citizenship. The Civil war gendered this brood that filled the South with horror, and their disorders and tumults precipitated a crisis that plunged the Southland into a paroxysm from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. There was no refuge from an evil that was all-pervasive. The great war with its pageants and sacrifices, its banners and generals, its storming soldiery and reservoirs of human blood was almost thrust out of the memory as the patriots of the sixties stood face to face to the all-encompassing perils of reconstruction. They saw the flag of the Union—the almost lifeless emblem of the genius of their liberties—frown feebly at the promulgation of a law that disfranchised 300,000 American citizens. The old banner seemed to turn her eye to the eagle at her staff-head and ask him to lend her his wide-spreading pinions, that she might bend the wing and fly away from the polluted spot—from the embodied forms of evil and ruin. Almost every utterance of the complaining tongue that was syllabled into speech, was to this effect: "Will our country—our civilization—withstand the shock?" Our Southern characters had been enriched by an assemblage of all the treasures which refined intellect could accumulate; we had wisely built upon foundations of public virtue; our institutions had the permanency of age and respectability, and exhibited everywhere the fullest maturity of athletic vigor. The paroles of Southern soldiers amnestied them from arrest for past military offences, but the clothing which their poverty obliged them to wear marked the target at which the lawless and vicious shot at their will. Personal and State rights were abridged until nothing was left of the sovereignty of the barren commonwealths or the enthralled individual. There were no juries of the vicinage but negroes; and daily the broken-hearted people were unwittingly aggrandizing rapacious officials. To the most depraved of the negroes the carpet-baggers were constantly appealing with arguments that stirred their blood. This narrative will not in an historical sense deal with the subject of reconstruction; from its want of compactness and continuity it would prove inefficient as a lesson or a guide. We present, however, imperfect portraits of a few men and women who were unfortunately in the pathway of the storm that stripped the husbandman of the fruits of his labor, the Southron of his liberty, stifled the cries of the distressed, and rendered the tenures of property unstable and insecure. In no conjuncture in which this paroxysm of politics placed the former masters of slaves, did they abate their care and zeal for their betterment. Monuments of brass and sculptured stone are not sufficiently enduring to memorialize the virtues of the negroes of the old plantations of the South, who watched and waited for the avenging arm of Providence to right the wrongs of old master. May God's mercy rest and abide upon this scattered remnant, that, like autumn's leaves in the forest, have been blown hither and thither by the wraith of the tempest.

[THE BROKEN SWORD.]

[CHAPTER I.]

LOOKING BACKWARD.

I have surrendered at discretion to vagrant thoughts. Just as the idle school-boy will pause beside the limpid stream to watch its eddying waters as they go on and on, "never hasting, never resting," so I sit to-night in the haze of the years that are dead, with the mind sadly reminiscent, and I watch the shadows as they seem to sketch upon the memory the familiar faces of our loved and lost, and I hear their laughter and songs—grateful echoes from the realm of the long ago. I am gazing again upon the sepulchre of the old South, after the plowshare of war and reconstruction had run the last furrow. In the garnering of the red harvest did our men and women of the sixties maintain themselves with a proper decorum? Were they less patriotic, less self-sacrificing, less ready with heart and hand to divert the destructive revolution of principle than their fathers of '76, who in the upbuilding of republican institutions wavered not in their purpose; when the terror and ignominy of the scaffold were before them; when they knew their blood must cement the foundations of the structure they were rearing, and they themselves become the first sacrifice in the temple of liberty, which they were dedicating? In that epoch and since we have been making the grand experiment of self-government; not as Rome made it, when liberty there was only a name for licentiousness; not as Greece made it, when a demagogue swayed the deluded masses and lacked only a throne to make him a king; but with a constitution that should deserve the encomium of the people, for the unutterable blessings it should bestow; a constitution impervious to unjust exactions and unpatriotic suggestions, we hoped for a policy dictated in a spirit of compromise; but as I look back upon the eventful past, the first adventure of Gil Blas occurs to me. He had been furnished by his uncle with a sorry mule and thirty or forty pistoles, and sent forth to seek his fortune. He set out accordingly, but had not proceeded far from home, when, sitting on his beast counting his pistoles with much satisfaction, into his hat, the mule suddenly raised its head and pricked up its ears. Gil Blas looked around to see the cause of its alarm, and perceived an old hat upon the ground in the middle of the road, with a rosary of very large beads in it. At the same time he heard a voice addressing him in a very pathetic tone, "Good traveler, in the name of the merciful God, and of all the saints, do drop a few pistoles in the hat." Looking in the direction from which these words proceeded, he saw to his dismay the muzzle of a blunderbuss projecting through the hedge, and pointing directly at his head. Gil Blas, not much pleased with the looks of the pious mendicant, dropped a few pistoles in the hat and scampered away as fast as he could. This slight narrative presents to the mind of the writer the most perfect emblem of the pacific remedy of reconstruction in its beginning.

To the contemplative mind there is a melancholy pleasure in looking backward; as shadows will enter unbidden into the camera obscura, though every portal appears securely guarded; so memories will flit fantastically into the imagination when every approach seems closed against intrusion. I am looking backward, as it were, through a smoked glass, for a great sunburst is within the radius of vision, a sunburst that cheered our tired eyes with its thousand scintillant gleams in the hot days of August A. D. Nineteen Hundred.

Looking backward upon a picturesque civilization—upon the old homesteads and plantations of the South, with their hallowed associations and ideals—with their impedimenta not of human chattels, but of compact masses of freed slaves, the underpinning of that civilization in its concrete form.

I have asked the historian, the essayist, the chronicler, the clairvoyant, to aid me in the retrospection, but they answer dubiously. There is no trodden path that I may pursue. No friendly hand that I may clasp as I stride across fens and brakes, and morasses: even the echoes of receding footsteps, like the laughter of happy voices are hushed and dead "lang syne." There are faded letters however that I may read; broken swords and battered shields hanging upon decaying walls; moth eaten uniforms in garret and closet, that will guide me backward. The line of vision is traversed by unwieldy throngs of dilapidated men, in tattered gray clothes, without a federal head, without intelligent momentum, breaking up and dissolving like icebergs drifting southward; they are coming back home where there is neither grain for the sickle, nor hope for the husbandman: coming back to little cottages where lights in the windows kept burning for dear papa flickered and spumed, then died down into the rustic candlesticks, when the little watchful eyes so tired and weary, closed upon the moonlight that shimmered within the humble chamber.

Looking back over grave yards, where we reverently laid away our jewels to be placed by the Great Lapidary in His Crown by and by, when we shall all rise from our sleep and shine in His emitted glory. Looking backward over a strange realm, without boundaries or capitals, where there are no soldiers and no battle fields, and where every thing is so fragrant and ethereal. Here we may fashion pictures and weave around them gossamer draperies as insubstantial as this golden twilight.

Hard-hitting, rough-riding moss-troopers rode over the subjugated domains of the bewildered South, with swords that flashed and turned every way like Alaric's; rode hither to obliterate the past, its monuments, its shrines, its traditions; to scarify the old south with harrows and bayonets; its altars, its homes, its civilization, and to fetter with chains a great warlike people, with a purpose as fatuous as ever animated the swart maid of Philistia. Against this senseless vengeance, the South rebelled again with the same old defiance, the same old manhood. You may prod the wounded lion with pikes and sabres, but you cannot tread upon it with iron heels without hearing its roar and feeling its fangs. To these marauders, the old South was but a moor fowl to be plucked and eaten. To us she was dynastic, like Hapsburg, Plantagenet or Hohenzollern. To them the South was a huge incubator, out of which was hatched "Stratagems and treasons:" To us she was a Queen, still wearing the purple, still grasping the sceptre, as in past evolutions and crises. She was Our Queen when a full century ago, and before there was a cabin upon her plantations she pleaded for the emancipation of slaves and was insultingly asked to withdraw her petition by the Merchant Marine of Massachusetts. She was Our Queen when envenomed abolitionists were gathering the aftermath of the "Higher law proclamation;" she was Our Queen when Ossawattomie Brown unleashed his bloodhounds upon a fresher trail at Harper's Ferry; she was Our Queen when Sumpter ran up a flag that had never before fluttered in a gale, never before greeted a young nation with its maiden blushes, followed by the hopes, the prayers, the aspirations, faith and loyalty of ten million men, women and children; Our Queen when "old Traveler" was stripped of his dust covered housings and led ever so weary back into Old Mars. Bob's stables; Our Queen when the last cavalier wiped the blood from his sabre and scabbarded it forever. God grant she may always be Our Queen that we may be her liegemen, leal and right trusty in all catastrophes! Hence we go back to think of her, to write of her, though a widow bereaved of her husband, and a mother who has buried her first born. There is no sword now to gleam like a flash of light over the plumes of charging squadrons: there is no guidon to mark the line of direction through defile and mountain pass: no call of the bugle "to saddle and away," no thanksgiving like that of Jackson; "God crowned our arms with Victory at McDowell yesterday;" No smile like that of Lee as the Army of the Potomac with trailing banners was double quicking back to Washington. Ah! no, but the old South through her blinding tears is smiling still; her dear old face re-lighted by a fresher inspiration.

A trifling dash of time between 1860 and 1870, but events have been packed away within that decade, that would overlap the four corners of any other century in the calendar. Within those years were compounded somewhere in laboratories all the combustible elements of war and pillage; the casting the projectiles that would destroy a hemisphere. Broken hearts—crushed hopes—desolated homes, an enslaved country, wrongs, indignities, outrages, oppressions, all, all wrought by the cruel instrumentalities of great masters of tragedy. Here is an old mansion with turrets and esplanades and terraces long neglected and sadly out of repair. Here are great oaks of a century's growth planted and pruned by hands that have long since forgotten their cunning. Here are lapping waters singing in low sweet octaves as they did when poured out of the hollow of His Hand. Here is the old rookery out of which are ricochetting birds almost of every voice and plume. Here are cattle, red and dappled, cropping the meadow grass. Here are vast expanses clad in the refreshing drapery of nature, upheaving their grassy billows. Here are the crumbling cabins of the old slaves, in silent platoons that flank the old mansion, the earmarks of a picturesque civilization abused and denounced. Slaves, many of whom like the paintings of Titian and Murillo and Correggio in the great mullioned halls have come down from former generations. In yonder clump of soughing pines stood the little meeting house of the "cullud folks" on "Old Marsa's plantation." Here for decades they worshipped. In the little brook that glides along so cheerily singing as it goes, they had baptized adult "bredrin and sisterin." Here many of them had felt the touch of the Master upon the emancipated souls, and heard His voice in their spiritual uplifting, tenderly calling, and there when the gnarled and knotted hands had ceased their toil "Ole Marsa and Ole Misses" had laid them crosswise upon rigid, lifeless bosoms, that heaved not again with the pangs of suffering; and out yonder under the maples, hard by the little babbling brook, reverent and tender hands white and black had lowered the rude coffin and covered it up in "God's acre," and here around the little altar ole Marster, and Miss Alice and Mars Harry worshipped with them. No master, no mistress, no slave in this consecrated ground; no black, no white, in the invisible Presence; no hard times to come again; no tithing men, nor tax gatherers; no snarling, snapping wolf to snatch the gnawed bone from the hungry wife and her starving child. If the larder were empty the "great house" had an exhaustless supply. If clothes were rent there was "allus stuff in de loom;" If the clouds gathered for snow "ole marsa" would put on his great coat and knock at the doors and ask, "Boys, have you got plenty of good wood for the storm'?" If Joshua had the "rheumatics" or Melinda the "shaking ager," or little Jeff the hives, there were ointments and liquids, pills and lotions; and what physician was so kind; whose hands so soft and tender, whose voice so comforting and sympathetic as "ole missis's and young missis's?" There was the garden from which the negroes would market their vegetables; there was the little "water million" patch where little Jeff and Susan Ann would run out at midday, and thump and thump and thump and would as often run back with their mouths wide-open like a rift in a black cloud, "Mammy, oh! Mammy, dat great big water million is mo'est ripe—be ripe by Sunday sho," and their little black feet would knock off a jig on the bare floor; then there was the pig sty where Sukey the "sassy poker," in its sleekness and fatness, would grunt and frisk and cavort all the day long. Then there was "Ole Boatswain," the coon dog, lazily napping in the door—barking at the treed coon in his sleep; then there were the "tater ridges" and the pumpkins and the cotton patches; then there were the cackling hens and the pullets, the ducks and geese and guinea-fowls; the eggs that Hannah and Clarissa and Melinda had counted a score of times, and knew to a four pence a' penny how much they would fetch in the town; and "dere was de wagin wid ole Bob an' ole Pete wid pinted yeares, chawin' de bit same as it were fodder, ready to dash off fore dey wus ready;" and there were the inventoried assets in trade, "free forfs Hanna's and two forfs Melinda's and seben forfs Clarissy's," all tumbled in disorder, live stock and dead stock. And then "dere was Melinda and Judy a settin' a middle ships into de wagin, all agwine to de town." And when the heavy wheels would rattle with its human freight over the hard ground of Ingleside, as the moon was dipping its nether horn below the line of vision, and Clara Bell and Melinda "a singin' de ole ship of Zion," "ole Marster an' Missis an' Miss Alice would run outen de great house jes to see if Ned had fotched us all back safe an' sound. An' den when Christmas would come, de ole turkey gobbler would be turnin' an' twistin' roun' and roun' fore de fire drappin' gravy in de dish, and de barbeku would be brownin' and de lasses a stewin out de taters in great big ubbens, fo de flambergasted cookin' stobes cum about to pester folkes. And den dere would be ole Cæsar a shufflin' towards ole Marser's room, and little Jeff a sneakin' on tip-toe to ketch ole Marser's Christmas gift fore he seed em, an' Mary an' Polly creepin' like cats in Miss Alice's chamber, to get their stockins that Santy Claus had stuffed from top to toe; and den de clatter in de great dinin' room, when wid bowls of cream, and flagons of mellow ole rye, Clarissa and Melindv would be makin' egg-nog fur de fokeses, white and cullud, on de plantation."

Oh! this golden prime!

There were no black soldiers in greasy uniforms a hep, hep, hepping about the plantation; no firing of guns by riotous negroes on the roadside; no drunken, revelling wretches to slash and deface portraits, walls and corridors; no lecherous villains to accost and abuse defenceless and inoffensive women; no vigils to keep for fear of murders, burglaries and conflagrations; no angry forces and energies to quicken and compound; no wife to say to her husband, "Have you fotched any wittles back from the conwenshun? 'Fore God de chillun haint had narry moufful o' nuffin to eat dis blessed day, nor me nuther."

Ah, no! the blessing that was vouchsafed unto Israel, despite its rebellion, was all bountiful in this land. "I will give thee peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and there shall be none to make thee afraid."

Then war came with its unutterable horrors and tumults. The old tallow candles were snuffed out, and there were fears and alarms in the mansion and the cabin; the thoroughbred was brought out of the stable with yellow housings on, like the gelding of a knight errant, and the young soldier, dressed all in gray with buff revers, rushed out of the house and vaulted into the saddle. There were kisses and good byes—lost echoes now—as the cavalier, young and happy and handsome, rode away. Yes, rode away in the descending shadows, over the hills, through the glades, to Manassas and to death. Yes, rode away to the death wrestle—to where the guns were spitting fire.

"Bress yo souls, fokeses," said Uncle Ned one day, as he leaned upon his staff like a sheik of the desert, "I looks back now und den, und peers lak I kin see ole missis way back yander in de war times, when de kannon was a plowin' froo de trees ober at Manassy, same as a sho nuff harrykin, und killin' a million of our federick soldiers at wun time. I seed her und Miss Alice cum outen de grate house, a fairly toting Mars Harry dat rainy day he rid off to de war, und Mars Harry he looked same as a gineral in all dem stripes und fedders, und Nelly she wuz jest a chompin' de bit und er pawin' de yurth lak she wuz moes afeerd de war want er gwine to hole out twell she und Mars Harry got dar; und den ole missis looked up in Mars Harry's face, und I seed her laf, do she wuz crying tu, und den I heerd hur say, 'My brave boy, how kin I ever giv yu up! Will yer git er furlow und cum home arter de battle? Und den Mars Harry he larfed too, und den I heerd him say, 'Oh mother don't be childish, I'm jest er gwine off fer my helth. I'm gwine to bring yer a yankee sord when we whups em and drives um tuther side o' de Pokomuc river.' Und den ole missis she put her pendence in every word Mars Harry tole her, kase when he rid off I heerd her tell Miss Alice dat her boy want agwine to be gone long, and dat de yankeys was agwine to give up fore dey fit ary battle; but bimeby, when ole missus seed dat Mars Harry mout not git a furlow, she jest gin herself up to die. All de day long pore old missis would walk up und down de piazzy a peekin' froo de trees und axin' me ef I spishioned he was gwine to git kilt, und den when she heerd dat our fokeses had fit de battle of Manassy, me und ole missis sot up all night long, jes a watchin' fer Mars Harry to ride back lak he rid off; but no Mars Harry neber didn't come back twell one rainy, grizzly night me und ole missis heerd a clatter down de road, und den we heerd somebody say, 'Wo! und den a passel ov soldiers cum up to missis easy like, and axed her if Mr. Seymo' lived dere; und when ole missis heerd dat word und seed de kivered wagin, she jes drapped down into de road dead. Pore ole missis! De soldiers took her up in dere arms und toted her into de 'grate house,' und dere was her and pore Miss Alice in hysteriks, and ole marser not a sayin' ary wurd but a chokin 'mos to def; und den de soldiers went back to de kivered wagin', and I heered 'em a draggin' outen it a great big box, and I seed dem totin it to de 'grate house' jes as easy and slow, wid dere milinterry hats offen dere heds in de rain, und den I node it was Mars Harry. When ole missis cum to, she made de soldiers take de led offen de coffin, und dere was Mars Harry a lyin' dere wid his eyes shot right tight, a smilin de butifullest all to hissef. Ole missis sot dere all dat nite lak a grate big statu, a runnin her fingers fru his hair an' a talkin' to him jes de same as if Mars Harry had rid back frum de war lak he rid off. An' den ole marsa he cum in und looked at Mars Harry a smilin' to hissef, an' I could see ole marsa shake an' shake, but he didn't say narry a wurd, an' he tuck Mars Harry's sord out of de coffin; den bimeby I heerd him say he was agwine to venge his death. Ole missis soon pined erway, cause Mars Harry was her eyeballs. I tells ye fokeses, dat was de most solemcholly site I ever seed in my born days. Poor ole missis didn't stay long arter Mars Harry died; she dun gon home too, an' I specks Mars Harry dun tole ole missis all erbout de battle of Manassy, an' how he fit an' how he got kilt; und erbout dat yankey sord he nebber didn't fotch back."

To a paternal ancestor of Colonel John Walter Seymour has been ascribed this prayer in battle, "Oh Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me." Then rising, he gave the command, "Forward, march! On, my lads!"

At eight o'clock on the morning of the 23rd of October, King Charles was riding along the ridge of Edgehill, and looking down into the valley of the Red Horse, a beautiful meadow, broken here and there by hedges and copses, he could see with his glasses the parliamentary army as they marched out of the town of Kleinton and aligned their forces in battle array.

"I never saw the rebels in a body before," said the king. "I will give them battle here." There were hot words around the royal standard. Rupert, a dashing young general, who had seen the swift, fiery charges of the fierce troopers in the thirty years war, was backed up by Patrick Lord Ruthven and Sir Walter Seymour, among the many Scots who had won renown under the great Augustus Adolphus and opposed fiercely by Lord Lindsey, an old comrade of the Earl of Essex, commander-in-chief of the rebel forces, who swore by all the saints in the calendar that he would not serve again in an army under a boy, referring to Prince Rupert, who was assigned by the king to command the army at Edge Hill that day.

It was to this circumstance that the country was indebted for the prayer aforesaid. The brave soldier, unyielding in his loyalty to the king, resigned his command as a general to command his company, and in so doing gave affront to Lord Lindsay and the king; but subsequently, at Scone, the king said to him, "You shall accompany me to London as a privy counsellor."

It was from this doughty ancestor of blessed memory that John Walter Seymour lineally descended. I have seen the old corselets, shackbolts, shields and trefoils of that chivalric era that belonged to the old baronet. Colonel Seymour had interested himself greatly in the literature of that institutional era that had so close a connection with the pomp and power of the Feudal system. He spoke learnedly too of the ideal purity of the social and moral code of the age.

The Colonel himself was no ignoble scion of so noble an ancestor. He had won his spurs and stars at Malvern Hill, and at the disbanding of the army he had covered the faded stars upon his collar with his pocket handkerchief until unobserved he could pluck them one by one and trample them underfoot. His haughty spirit could not brook the shame that overlaid him like a shroud when his sword passed out of his hands hilt foremost at Appomattox. He had taken the beautiful Alice Glendower from a neighboring estate as his wife twenty-six years ago, and now in the year 186-, though a shadow darkening and deepening lay athwart heart and home, the old man was still muttering curses long, loud and deep. He had fully assimilated the indignant spirit of Coriolanus. "I would they were barbarians (as they are though in Rome littered), not Romans as they are not though calved in the porch of the capitol." His only surviving child Alice was now in her twenty-third year. Harry, a princely fellow, a young lieutenant of cavalry, had fallen at the battle of Manassas and ever since that day the mother had steadily declined until now the end had almost come. The likeness of the dead boy was photographed vividly upon her heart and every tender chord was ceaselessly vibrating from the presence of a grief, that recreated fancies and memories that brought back to her the vanished idol. God's peace had settled upon the old home and its hearth stones, one beautiful Sabbath morning, as the Colonel, his daughter and old Clarissa had assembled in Mrs. Seymours's bed chamber. The light of the morning sun shimmered through open windows, and the shadows of the tree boughs like imprisoned fairies danced in cotilion upon the polished floor. "The birds are singing so sweetly to-day," observed the sick lady.

"Yes indeed, they are," replied her husband.

"My dear," she said as she turned her face to him, "I have been greatly troubled by a horrid dream."

"Land sakes alive ole missis," interrupted Clarissa, "don't yu pester yoursef to def erbout dreams these outlandish times. Dey is bad enuff goodness nose widout dreaming dreams. Ned he jumped clean outen de bed tother nite hollering for his ole muskit lak he was agwine to war—his eyes fairly a sot in his head lak a craw-fish and a tarryfying me to def and hollering 'fire! fire!' and a foaming at the mouf lak a mad dog, und duz yu know what I dun ole missis? when dat drotted nigger hollered fire! fire! I jes retched ober de table an' got de pale of water an' I put out dat fire fore Ned skovered whay hit war. Dat fool nigger walks perpendikler, now yu heers my racket." She laughed again and again as she continued: "And Ned he wanted to fight; he was most drounded."

There was little of sentiment and less of diplomacy in the character of Colonel Seymour; though he was exceedingly tolerant toward Clarissa with her little vagaries and superstitions. What the dream of the good lady was has never been known—the narrative was rudely broken off by the interruption of Clarissa.

Would you know sweet Alice more intimately? I cannot portray her as she deserves; her heart was like so many little cells into which were unceasingly dropping the honey of blue thistle blossoms of charity. In every den of wretchedness; in every hovel where squalor and disease disputed all other dominions, she was a beam of sunshine, giving warmth and cheer and joy. The little star-eyed daisies in the meadow would turn up their tiny faces to greet her with smiles as she would pass them day after day with the little basket upon her arm; God had put her here among these poor people—among the deluded negroes as his missionary, and I am quite sure He was pleased with her work. I cannot describe her beauty and grace of person better than in the natural and characteristic language of Clarissa "Miss Alice," she would say, "Yu is the most butifullest white gal I ever seed in de wurrel; yer cheek is jes lak mellow wine-sop apples, und yer eyes is blu und bright lak agate marbles, und yer teeth as white as de dribben snow, und when yer laffs, pen pon it, even de birds in de trees stops to lisen; und yu is jes as suple und spry as de clown in de show."

Golden tresses like a nimbus of glory adorned her queenly head. Eyes of blue graduated to the softest tint; cheeks that transfered the deep blush from tender spring blossoms. Something in her there was that set you to thinking of those "strange back-grounds of Raphael—that hectic and deep brief twilight in which Southern suns fall asleep." With Alice in her presence, Clarissa felt no evil; when the storm came with blinding fire, its fierce thunders, her refuge was by her side. She was her inspiration, her providence. The gentle hand upon the hot brow and there came relief; an old fashioned lullaby from her sweet lips and the fevered pickaninny in the cradle would turn upon his side and fall into a grateful slumber. A prayer spoken out of a heart touched by pity or sorrow, and instantly another heart would be uplifted in thanksgiving. She exercised too a power over the freed slaves that made captive to her will almost all the stubborn and rebellious negroes. Old Ned would have plucked out his eyes for her and cast them at her feet; so would Clarissa, so would Clarabel; so would old Caesar and Hannah and Joshua. Only these rebelled against her influence, to wit: Aleck, Miles and Ephraim. Clarissa would say to her young mistress so inquisitively, "Miss Alice, why don't yu git married? Peers like child yer is too sweet and pretty to live allus by yer lone, lorn self. Yer aint allers gwine to be 'ticin an butiful like yer is now. By and by de crow's foot is agwine to cum into yer lubly face and dere is gwine to be kurlikus and frowns in yo eyes jes lak yo mammy's; she used to be pretty und lubly jes' lak you, and whar is she now? De boys aint gwine to brak their necks over you when yer gets ole an' ugly, nuther. Now dey is lak a passel ov yallow jackets a swarmin' a-roun my house, and axin me dis ting an' tuther ting about dare sweetheart, and bress yo dear life I has to keep a patchin' up de fence whar dey climbs ober to keep de horgs an' cattle beastes out o de crap. Dey is afraid to cum to de 'grate house;' skeert of yu an' ole marser. Ole Mars John aint gwine to be here allus, nuther; see how cranksided he is gettin' an' so ill an' contrawy that we das'nt projec' wid him no mo; an' whar wud yu be chile in dis grate, big house und dis grate big plantashun wid de cussed niggers a marchin' an' a beatin' drums an' a shootin' guns lak ole Sherman's army, treadin' down de corn an' 'taters und a momickin' up de chickins und de sheepses und de cattle beastes? 'Taint agwine to do nohow. Dat it aint. I kin count fourteen portly yung 'uns dat wud jump clean akross de crick fer yer any hour God sends."

Alice could only silently hearken to the force of such plain, matter-of-fact reasoning, but poor girl, there was not a single niche in her heart into which she could lift an idol. Within the shrine there were nothing but soulless effigies, so faded and old and lifeless that they recalled only battle-fields and sepulchres. "Will her prince never come, into whose eyes she can see mirrored her own self, her soul in its beauty, love and happiness?" Do you ask? There is a medallion that hangs by a golden chain across her fair bosom. "How long had she worn it there," think you? Ever since

"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."

[CHAPTER II.]

OUR SCOTCH-IRISH.

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 this great 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 arrived from 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 own people, 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. They made 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 holding in 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."

[CHAPTER III.]

THE ASSASSINS OF THE PEACE OF THE SOUTH.

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 at least 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 lair for 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 under masters 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 deacon Johnson 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."

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 required a 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 answer by 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, trial justices 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.

[CHAPTER IV.]

TYPES AND SHADOWS.

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 frequently exhibit 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 fastened themselves 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 scriptur agen, 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 ever gets 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 to hole 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;

"When I was ergrwine down de field,
De blacksnake bit me on de heel;
Und ez I riz to fire my best
I run ergin a yaller jacket's nest.

"Yaller jackets indeed" echoed Hannah as she proudly tossed her aged head, "when Joshua fetches dem rones und kerrige, dare haint ergwine to be no yaller jackets on me ur him udder."

The village was thronged with the black wards of the government, when Joshua arrived wearied and hungry. Allured by expectations that had been most wantonly excited, the negroes flocked into the town with trunks, valises, travelling bags, some of them of the most primitive description, within which to put their pensions. Flattering expressions came from truly loyal hearts, when the agent of the freedman's bureau ascended the court house steps to address the freedmen. His very presence was like the sunlight over the darkened land, but alas; he was the man who was to pass out to each and all of the misguided negroes the cup of disappointment and bitterness, and they in their nakedness and stupidity would drink its lees with the desperate resoluteness of fanatics.

Joshua stood with his old skinny hands clasped upon his bosom, looking up in an attitude of reverence.

"Grate Jarryko!" he said to himself; "Ef dis bellion hadn't upriz de ole isshu nigger mouter been way back yander a totin' de grubbin hoe fur Jeff Davis, de secesh, und de ole bull whup er natally cryin fur de po niggers meat. Ef Hanner seed dis site, she'd jine de mishunary's, kase she mouter node dat providence had sont dat bero man und hit is mo better dan grace."

The old negro saw the diamonds glittering upon the enameled shirt bosom of the agent and he said again in rapture.

"Day is same ez de starrs in de hellyments."

He saw a huge chain dangling from his neck, and he exclaimed.

"Grate Jarryko! ef de ole ship of Zion wur to git shipracked in Galilee, yu mout grapple her wid dat dare chain und hit mout hole twell de harrykin swaged."

The old negro was lost in wonder, and at last overpowered by fatigue, and the press of the throng, he dropped out of line and fell asleep upon an empty crate. How long he slept does not enter into the chronicle. There were mischievous boys then as there are now, and whilst he slept they collected from old bureau drawers one hundred dollars of brand new confederate treasury notes of the issue of 1864, and placed them loosely in his beaver and covered it over with his red pocket handkerchief. Upon awaking, Joshua rubbed his eyes, and then his knees and his elbows; looked around dazedly, and exclaimed.

"Consound my buttons, ef de bero man haint dun und penshuned off de niggers, und gon; und dis heer nigger a drapped back to sleep, lak a idgeot, wid nary cent of de penshun. Grate Jarryko! I knows what Hanner is ergwine to say; she's ergwine to ax me erbout de hosses, und den she's ergwine to aggravate me wid providence dis, und grace dat, und mishunary heer, und meferdis dare. Ef yu'd pervided yoself wid sum of dat grace down at Filadelfy meetin' house Joshaway, she's ergwine to say, you mouter fotched de rones und de kerrige too. Grate Jarryko! hit peers lak provedense hez dun und flung de fat in de fire arter all."

Taking up his old hat, the confederate money went scurrying here and there; the old negro looked around him suspiciously, and exclaimed in an excited way.

"Grate Jarryko! whicherway did all dis munny cum from? hit wur provedense dat time und no mistake; now yu sees Hanner which wun of dem meeting houses is got de under holt; Yu's dun und hilt to grace, und me runs wid fafe, und whicherwun is got de munny? Tell me dat?"

Whilst Joshua was sleeping, Hannah was busy hammering and packing the scant furniture for its removal to the great house, and at high noon everything was out of doors. The squealing pig was fettered like a convict, and old Boatswain, the coon dog, was tied and howling like a catamount. Joshua placed the money into his haversack, with the nails and snuff, looked up at the setting sun, and said to himself.

"I mout let Hanner pick out dem hosses, und de kerrige, kase she mout not like de rones."

The old negro struck a bee-line for home with the further observation.

"Grate Jarryko! ef hit warnt fur Ganderbilt, I specks dis ole nigger mout be de richest man on de top side of de yurth."

He paused for a moment and said.

"I dun und forgit; I'm mo'est sho Hanner is ergwine to ax fer sperrets fur her griping missury."

And he stepped into the nearest groggery and purchased a pint or more with the money an old friend had given him.

"Now den ole town, I bids yu farwell twell yu sees me und Hanner in de kerrige."

As Joshua was going on toward home his mind became speculative. Great schemes in a crude way were thought of, and he said to himself.

"Now dat de munny is dun un riv, ef I ketches Hanner wun mo time wid a hoe in her hands, I'm ergwine to git a vorcement. She mout take lessons on de peanny-forty from dat white gal in de grate house und play de hopperatticks arternoons arter me und her hez driv over de plantushun und seed to de craps. When I gits home I'm ergwine to berry dis munny under de tater hill und I haint ergwine to let Hanner spishun whay I keeps hit, kase she'll buy all de hosses in de Newnited States und finely hit will all be gone. I'm ergwine to fling de whup und pull de ribbuns myself, und ole Semo de secesh jess got to git outen de grate house. Lemme see how dese sperrets tastes," he said. And he reached in his ole haversack, got the flask and put it to his mouth. "Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle; umph," he said, smacking his lips, "dat is sho good truck. Is yu got gumpshun nuff ter count dis munny, specks it oversizes your judgment, ole hoss," and he began to count upon his fingers, "five hundred, hundred fousand, hundred million. Great king! what am I gwine ter do wid dis munny; ef ole Mars Linkun cud see Joshaway now, wid his freedom und de grate house und de plantashun und de hosses, he wud larf und larf frum wun eend of his mouf to the tother. You see's now Mr. Bellyun what yu is dun und dun fur yosef crackin de whup ober de po nigger."

A distance of two miles had been placed between the old negro and the village and he had two more miles to go. One mile ahead ran with a swift current the black waters of Chowattuck, but there was a substantial foot log thrown across it, and it was ordinarily safe. Joshua had gone but a little farther when he wanted to sample "dem dar sperrets agin," "Pen upon it, I nattally feels dat ar truck er oozin outen my toe nails." The "tikler" was turned up again, and gurgle, gurgle, gurgle sang the fiery spirits. The money now had greatly multiplied; the trees upon the roadside were somersaulting, and the road itself, like a serpent, was twisting in and out about his tangled legs. Joshua stopped in sight of the water with the observation.

"Hole on dar ole hoss, what is yu ergwine ter do, dis munny aint ergwine to tote yu ober dis crick; ole glory back yander aint gwine ter heer yu hollow, what is yer gwine to do?"

He put his hands upon his old knees, and rubbed them down, brought his coat sleeves with a fierce swing across his cavernous mouth, fetched a grunt or two, then planted his feet upon the foot-log.

"Studdy yosef ole hoss, studdy yosef, ef yu draps inter dis heer crick und gits drounded, it's ergwine to bust up ebery scalyhorg in der souf."

Three times he tried to walk the log and as often fell off before reaching the water.

"Konsoun de crick," he muttered, "hit hadn't orter be heer no how, er pesterrin fokses er cummin und er gwine; pears lak now de bellion is dun und fell dere is a dratted crick at ebery crook in de rode; blame my hide ef I aint gwine ercross ef I has ter crawl lak a santypede; I kin straddle de dratted fing un I kin git ercross arter a fashun, but what is I gwine ter do wid de happy-sak und de munny? I is bleeged ter use bof hands ter hold on to de dratted log when I slips und slides, und I kaint tote de happy-sak in my mouf, kase I haint got but one ole snag in my hed, and hit is in de furder eend; consound it, whay it hadn't orter be no how. I kin tie de happy-sak to de kote keerts, und den ole hoss, yu und me kin land on de tother side of de crick lak a kildee. Ef I was ergwine tother way dar wud be a passel ob kaarts cummin dis way; dey is allus gwine de rong way at de rong time." So argued Joshua as he fastened the haversack to the only button on the back of his coat.

"Now den ole buttun, ef yu was ter brake loose, un drap yu wud werk bigger strucshun dan a yeth-shake, dat yu wud. Provedense is ergwine to do hits part ef Hanner is dun und dun hern."

Slipping and sliding, the old negro was approaching the other end of the foot log; his heavily weighted coat skirts thumping against his shanks, when he was sliding along under an overhanging cypress bush about midway of the deep channel, "kerchunk" some heavy object dropped into the water.

"Grate Jarryko!" exclaimed the old negro alarmed, "what a tremenjous mockisun snake dat was a drapping off dat dar bush; I'm ergwine ter git erway frum dis crick, sho yo born."

Slipping and sliding he finally got to the end, and with the observation "Peers lak I feels mity lightsum in de hine parts," he put his hand behind him to feel for his haversack, and found it gone.

The loss of the treasure for the moment confused the old negro, then he began to cry and swear, until his grief at last found expression in the exclamation:

"Grate Jarryko! Dem passages o' scriptur erbout fafe und erbout grace und erbout proverdense got twisted und tangled togedder into a loblolly, und bress de Lawd, dis heer happuning is de eend of it all."

He then looked back upon the raging flood, utterly forlorn, and plaintively addressed himself to his situation:

"Now, whot's Hanner gwine ter do erbout dem hosses und de kerrige und de grate house, und dey kivered up in dat sloshy graveyard—drownded to def in de turkle hole? Dat ole button dun und broke loose und drapped in de werry wustest place on de top side o' de yeth. Now Hanner she's ergwine ter say hit wuz de sperrets. Well, den, how did de sperrets git inter de button? Dat's de pint. She mout say ergen dat ef dem sperrets hadn't got mixed up wid de ankle jints dat dis nigger mouter slewed ter disser eend und hilt on ter de munny. Well, den, how cum de drotted crick in de middle o' de rode? Dat's er nudder pint. Dis heer missury dun und cum erbout twixt Hanner und de debbil; dats de how. She er drapped back yander, er singin',

'Hold de fort, fer I'm er coming'

und er spectin' de hosses und de kerrige, und bress de Lawd she dun und flung de fat in de fiar her own sef. How's I ergwine ter hole de fort wid de ammynishun in de dratted crick? I haint ergwine ter put de blame on de sperrits, kase hit hadn't orter go dare. She mout er node dat ole buttun warnt ergwine to tote dat strane, und dat hit wus ergwine ter brake loose und drap fust er las. How wus I er gwine ter git ter dis eend epseps I had fafe in de button? Now she mout say ergin dat I hed orter slewed across fust und den slewed back und fotched de munny. Bress de Lawd, how wuz I ergwine ter know de munny wuz gwine to stay at de tuther eend und I at disser eend? Tell me dat. Twixt de scalyhorgs und dat Mefodis meetin house, dare's ergwine ter cum a slycoon in dis lan' yit."

As Joshua approached his cabin he looked up and saw his old wife sitting in a dilapidated rocking chair, surrounded by the scant furniture, and singing:

"Tis grace hez fotched me safe dis fur.
Und grace gwine take me home."

He stopped abruptly and began to groan and mutter.

"Grate Jarryko!" he exclaimed, as he vigorously rubbed one foot against the other, "Ef yu's spectin' dem rones to tote yu in de kerrige to Filadelfy meetin' house, hits ergwine ter be by und twixt mo better grace dan yu's got, ur me udder."

The old negro looked up again over the broken rim of his beaver, and he began to mutter again, "Grate Jarryko! Ef dat fool nigger haint dun und gone und turned de house inside outtards! De debbil hez sho broke loose in de middle ships o' dis ole plantashun, und dem evil sperrets is in cohoot wid won ernudder."

At this point Hannah observed Joshua zigzagging across the field without horses or carriage, and her wrath was exceeding fierce.

"Pend upon it," she exclaimed, "dat ar ole nigger fool de werry eyeballs outen yo hed. Gwine ter fetch de rones und de kerrige! Grate king! Ef de good Lawd spares me twell den, when de jedge cums er roun' ter de kote, I'm ergwine ter git me er vorcement. Mont ez well go inter cohootnership wid a billy gote, widout ary moufful o' fodder ez dat ole black idgeot."

When Joshua came within hailing distance, Hannah halloed to him; "Whay hez yu been all dis nite Joshaway? Here I'se sot und sot ever sense daylite down, in de jam of de chimney und every now und den hit peeerd lak I heerd dem rones er plumputy plump down de rode, er cummin same ez a sho nuff harrykin, und bress Gord heer yu cums ergin wid de drunken reels lak er ole hoss, wid de bline staggers, mommucked up wusser dan a kadnipper; Look at dat ole bever hat, er layin' dare pine plank lak a turkle trap sot bottom uppards."

Joshua heaved one or more sighs as he blurted out in a drowsy way; "Dem dare hosses yu heerd down de rode, er blickerty blick, dun und got drownded to def in de crick last nite."

"Grate king!" exclaimed Hannah wrathfully; "ef de good Lord spares me twell den, when de jedge gits to de kote, I'm gwine to git me a vorcement."

"Und me too;" ejaculated Joshua as he stretched himself upon a plank for a nap.

[CHAPTER V.]

PATRIOTIC MEN DELIBERATING.

At the hour of 3 p. m., in the early autumn of 186—, several representative gentlemen met by previous agreement in the library of Colonel Seymour. This congress of Southern leaders of the old school, after the interchange of the usual courtesies, resolved themselves into "A Committee of the Whole upon the state of the Union," with Judge Bonham in the chair, and was addressed at length by Governor Ainsworth. This gentleman had honored his state as one of its Senators in the Federal Congress; again as Secretary of the Navy, and had filled by successive elections the office of Governor for three terms. He had reached that mellow age when the intellect becomes largely retrospective. The manner of this distinguished statesman was singularly individual. In early life strongly inclined to the contemplation of perplexing political questions, he possessed a graphic, nervous force—a kind of untamed vigor—a raciness of flavor in speech that belonged only to the individual who thought for himself. There were few men more richly endowed; his intellect was of the highest order—clear, rapid and comprehensive—combined with an extraordinary facility of expressing and illustrating his ideas, both in conversation and debate. He possessed a rich imagination, a rare and delicate taste, a gentle and sportive wit, and an uninterrupted flow of humor, that made him the delight of every circle. Nor were his moral qualities less deserving of respect and admiration. He was generous, brave, patriotic and independent. He was the slave of no ambitious or selfish policy; the hunter of no factitious or delusive popularity; he spoke the language of truth, justice and wisdom. A "throb of gratitude beat in the hearts of the people," and the sentiment of an affectionate respect glowed in their bosoms for the "old man eloquent." His speeches, too, were essentially characteristic, abounding in keen satire, humor, and frequently in the most direct and idiomatic language. Given to intense conviction rather than to subtle discernment, and devoting his unusual ability to studied effort, he could, whenever he felt so inclined, "strip the mask from the hypocrite, and the cowl from the bigot."

This was the man toward whom the patriotic sentiment of the country was directed; the man who might, by possibility, lash the raging Hellespont into submission. "But what avail," said he as he leaned heavily upon his staff, "are arguments and protests? Can we charm the serpent into harmlessness by the feeble chirping of the wren? Can we tranquilize the country by indignant declamation?" Then with an effort he assumed a poise still more dignified and serious, as he continued:

"Gentlemen, when the seas are lashed into a rage, no matter who are the mad spirits of the storm, they cannot say to their tumultuous waters, 'thus far shalt thou go, and no farther, and here shalt thy proud waves be stayed.' There are other powers in motion beneath its surface, which they wist not of, and whose might they can neither direct or control. I have stood upon the shores of the mighty ocean, and observed the forerunners of the coming storm. I have heard the moan of its restless waters in the caverns of the great deep, and have seen the upheaving of the billows, which rose, and raged and tossed as foam from their bosoms, the wild spirits that gendered the tempest. I envy not the triumph of those who have troubled the waters; who have laid waste the South, who have beggared her proud people. I had rather stand with my countrymen powerless, but brave and unyielding, than to wield the thunderbolts of Jove, if I must employ their power and resource in wrong and oppression. When the last spark of Roman liberty was extinguished; when no voice but that of Augustus was heard, and no power but that of Augustus was felt, his venal flatterers vied with each other in deifying their god, and degrading those firm, defiant spirits who stood for their country and its tranquility. Cæsar had subjugated the world, all but the dark unbending soul of Cato. In a catastrophe, such as this, let that band of patriots to which it is my pride to belong, share in the spirit of the last of the Romans; that spirit which scorns to bow before any earthly power, save that of their beleaguered country.

The reconstruction government has purposely demoralized the economic conditions which contributed to the prosperity of the South. Full well it knew that the wealth of the people depended upon their labor. There was a time when plunder was the great resource of the nations of the earth. The first kingdom was sustained by pillage and conquest, and great Babylon, the glory of the Chaldean empire, was adorned by the spoils of all Asia; the Assyrian was plundered by the Persian, the Persian by the Macedonian, and it at last devoured by the Roman power. The wolf which nursed its founder, gave a hunger for prey insatiable to the whole world. There was not a temple nor a shrine between the Euphrates and the salted sea that was not pillaged by these marauders. The tide of ages, century after century, had rolled over the last fragment of Roman power; the light of science had broken upon the world, before mankind seemed to realize that our Creator, dead aeons ago had said: 'By the sweat of his brow man should eat his bread all the days of his life.'

Wealth is power, and the wealth of a nation is its labor, its abundant control of all the great agencies of nature employed in production. The products of human labor, its food and clothing, like the fruits of the earth are annual, and God in his wisdom has adjusted human wants to their power of production. Like the bread from heaven the dews of every night produce the crops, and the labors of every day gather the harvest. What, but an almost boundless power of consumption and reproduction has given to the South its athletic vigor, and yet the enfranchisement of the negroes has been a fatal blow to every industrial interest. It has left our plows to rot in the furrow, and our plantations to grow up in briers and brambles.

That liberty, which ranks in our organic law next to life, is subjected to the caprice of those who happen in the ever varying conditions of human affairs to be placed over us as masters. The South believed that the theory of the government derived its chiefest captivation from its regard to the equal rights of all its citizens and from its pledge to maintain and preserve those rights. It assumed to proclaim the happiness of the people to have been the object of its institution, and to guarantee to each and to all without limitation the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property.

It has been reserved for the power of oppression, in its active and diffused state, to give effect to the unhallowed innovation upon the rights of the South.

Reconstruction is the Gethsemane of southern life. God's law is higher than man's law. Man's feeble statutes cannot annul the immutable ordinances of the Almighty. Those whom God has put asunder, let no man join together.

Who could have foreseen that in the first century of our existence African freedmen would rule sovereign commonwealths, and become the judges of the rights and property of a race who had ruled the destinies of the world since governments—patriarchal, monarchical or constitutional—was known to man?

The true, sincere and rational humanitarian looks with sorrow upon the future state of the misguided negroes; for when this institutional age shall have passed away, he sees the exodus or extirpation of this disturbing element in the social and political conditions of the more powerful sovereign race. The authors of the infamous policy have written their hic jacet against our civilization.

No where can there be found in the history of any country where the civil and military policy have been so basely prostituted, or where the safeguards of liberty, life and property were ever entrusted to freed slaves—human chattels; slaves who never for a moment have been in a state of pupilage. It is an epoch that marks the decadence of the manhood and civilization of a great nation—homogeneous, prosperous, enlightened and happy. The nearest approximation to this era of ruin—of social degradation—was when the slaves in Rome were enfranchised by order of the emperor, and conditions there were totally dissimilar. Whilst they enjoyed certain rights and prerogatives of manumission, they were still held to duties of obedience and gratitude. Whatever were the fruits of their toil and industry, their patrons shared or inherited the third part, or even the whole of their acquisitions. In the decline of this great empire, the proud mistress of the world, we are told that hereditary distinctions were gradually abolished, and the reason or instinct of Justinian completed the simple form of an absolute monarchy. In the eye of the law all Romans were equal and all subjects were citizens. The inestimable character was degraded to an obsolete and empty name. The voice of a Roman could no longer enact laws or create the annual ministers of his power.

"It may take many generations perhaps, for moral changes are slow, to put out all our lights of knowledge that are now beaming from every cottage in the South; but one after another they will be extinguished, and with them the beacon torch of liberty. When the white men of the South shall come to see how things are, and to realize the downward tendency, physical, intellectual manhood will make a throe to regain the height it has lost, and if it fails, a storm will arise from the elements they are compounding, that will break somewhere and spend itself with desolating fury. They cannot degrade a people who have been enlightened and free, prosperous and happy, without igniting a mass which they can no more control, than they can the central fires of Vesuvius.

"Up to the commencement of hostilities between the North and the South, there were in the South millions of people employed directly or indirectly in the honest and wholesome avocation of agriculture, and by its great encouraging system, sustained in a condition of existence, both moral and physical, equally as prosperous and independent as any other agricultural people in any other region of the earth. They were white men who piece by piece built up the whole superstructure, and thereby reinforced the country with so much labor and skill; furnished so much mutual employment for that skill and labor, aided as they were by so many instrumentalities of toil and agents of production. What a country it was—supplied by this system from the labor of our own hands and workshops, with all the machinery, fruits of the earth, and all the needful fabrics of human skill. This great system comprehended every class and every source of material wealth. Under this system our people prospered. The white population of the South came by descent from a parent stock, that from the foundation of society had governed in wisdom and moderation the most enlightened countries of the world; who had written every constitution, fought every battle, endowed every charity, established every government, introduced every reform that has given to the world its christian development and progress.

"When these extra-hazardous reconstruction acts were submitted to the Legislature of the South, they refused to "chop logic" with the Reconstruction party. It would have been contrary to the experience of mankind, and an exception to all the teachings of history, if in the high excitement then prevailing—the exasperation of the people—the outrages threatened and inflicted, the South had yielded one jot or tittle or swerved from its honest, patriotic convictions. The transition was from a state in which the integrity and intelligence of the white race, ennobled by centuries of meritorious service, had ruled; to a government by a black race that less than five generations before had been hunted like wild beasts in the jungles of the dark continent; who were handcuffed and decoyed into slave ships, and who had been slaves until the proclamation of President Lincoln emancipated them in the territory protected by the U. S. Army. The transition was to a condition of things in which white men to the number of three hundred thousand were disfranchised and deprived of the right to vote and to hold office, and the enfranchisement of more than a corresponding number of benighted negroes with the right to vote and hold office. The transition of the slave, was too sudden—too alarming—too degrading. No people who were proud of their traditions, their institutions, could have looked upon such a change with complacency; nor seen their local government pass into the hands of their slaves—irresponsible, illiterate, brutish, rapacious, without being goaded into violent resistance.

"It has been remarked 'Oh Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name.' If the gift of the elective franchise enabled the negro to protect himself in his rights of person and property, the denial of it to the white man took away from him that protection and that right. They went even to lower depths, and by the election and registration laws basely surrendered into the hands of the carpet-baggers all power. The judiciary, the last refuge of the unfortunate and oppressed is stricken down and stripped of both ermine and respectability. The ballot box—the sanctuary of freedom—the ballot box—the only secure refuge of liberty—the ballot box, the armory where freedom's weapons are wont to terrify tyrants, is made the charnel house in which the assassinated liberties of a defenceless, prostrated people are buried; is made the dice box in which are staked and played for by the freedmen of the South the revenues of plundered commonwealths. What wonder in this lust for power men should become strangers to the people they govern, outlaws to honesty and patriotism.

"They know no law but that of force, and no God but Mammon. They ply their theft upon every citizen, enthrall him with taxation, deny him the right to be seen or heard or felt at the ballot box or before the court. In the train of these outrages and indignities came a flood of unwholesome oppressive laws, creating new offices, increasing the salaries of incompetent and truculent officials, multiplying the cost and expenditures of government, and correspondingly increasing the burdens of taxation. Then came martial law, militia campaigns, loyal leagues, murders, arsons, burglaries, rapes, and a reign of terror and intimidation to make the way for the easy perpetration of the most monstrous and unparallelled wrongs, frauds and outrages that ever cursed the earth. The South, like a beautiful captive, was turned over to be deflowered and defiled. She could only cry in her desperation—"I am within your brutal power, and gagged and pinioned must submit."

"Our elective judiciary has contributed immeasurably to the vicious, demoralizing spirit of the age." The intelligent and upright judge is the representative of the law in its simplicity, sufficiency and learning. He is the living exponent of its justice. Whatever the law is will appear in him, and whatever it does will be done through him. The different departments of industrial activity center in him. The plowman in the field, the smith at his anvil, the miner in the earth, the operative in the factory, the banker at his desk, are all a vital part of his being. He is the foremost agent of providence in keeping up the natural distinction of race and position. His creed is that men are not to be antagonists, but friends. Differ they must in usages and institutions, in habits and pursuits; but in his opinion they differ, not that they may be separated, but for a truer sympathy and a compacter union. Mountains and seas insulate, language and religion differentiate men, but the law in its economical administration corrects these things into the elements of a genuine brotherhood. The fortunes of the world, so far as they are delegated to human care, are in his hands. The peaceful progress of society is blended with his personal integrity. Commonwealths, corporations and individuals vest their wealth, their reputation, their security in him, and if any one man more than another is under the most sacred of earthly obligations to be an example of the highest integrity, the most exact justice, the noblest virtue of thought, word and action, it is the judge of our courts of record. No feudal baron—no courtly knight—ever had the power that may now be exercised by him.

"Our civilization pledges us to the sway of moral principles; its rule is imperative, because we have assumed the title of men, domesticated our hearts, and accepted the religion of Jesus Christ. Judicial life, by the earnestness with which it has acted in the past crisis of our state and national history, by the patriotic devotion and interpretation of the constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof, by its conservative temper in resisting fanaticism, vice, corruption and fraud has shown itself a watchful guardian of the momentous trusts confided to its keeping. The honest, learned judge has pledged himself for the faith of contracts and treaties; he has jealously guarded the institutions of the country and bravely upheld them as the embodiment of our doctrines and our hopes. The traditions, laws and customs of the country have been committed to him, and with the ever active jealousy of encroachment, he has not disguised his fears of centralization or oppression. Hitherto, irrespective of all party relations, the judicial system was slowly but surely working out the great problems of domestic prosperity. Times have changed, however, and we have changed with them. Our present elective judiciary is indeed the black vomit of reconstruction.

"It may be seriously questioned whether under any circumstances the elective system is adequate for the purpose designed. All classes, high and low, sooner or later come before the tribunal of justice. Its judgments and decrees affect the humblest, as well as the most powerful individual and control the strongest combinations of men. We know that it is utterly impossible to keep the nomination and election clear of mere political influences and those of the worst kind. It is said that revolutions never go backward; nevertheless in the teeth of the adage I confess that I can see no better way of selecting judges than the mode pointed out by the unamended constitutions and the laws and by the general good sense of mankind. I believe that this method is wise and conservative, in harmony with our institutions and sufficiently democratic to satisfy the people. All the rest is faction, demagogism and cabal. The judge should represent no interest, no party, only the law; he is an umpire between man and man, between the individual and the body social.

"What is required in the judge is ability, learning, integrity. In public station it is as necessary to be thought honest as to be so, and the moment the popular mind once takes in the true position of the elective judge, the moment that it perceives the magistrate to be possessed of neither true power nor real dignity, and exposed perpetually to temptation, that moment the influence and usefulness of the judge will be destroyed. Their judgments in such cases will be received without respect and obeyed only so far as they can be enforced, and if the people shall ever break down and trample under foot the defences of unpopular power; the Judiciary will be scouted from their seats, their filthy and tattered ermine will be torn from their backs, and they will be driven out into hopeless ignominy as the meanest of sycophants, and the most truculent of demagogues.... A hundred and eighty years ago the English parliament, sick of the miseries resulting from a corrupt judiciary, changed the tenure of the office, abolished their dependence on the sovereign and made the tenure of their existence dependent on their good behavior alone. From that time to this the English judiciary has risen in character and influence. With us the system is elective. The judicial candidate, like a fish monger, goes with his wares into a market overt. He advertises his opinions—his promises, he makes his pledges, he puts a premium upon the ballot, he weighs to a nicety the purchasable value of negro electors. The rival candidate does the same, and hence the office is purchasable at the price of manhood, integrity, learning and capacity. Thus the whole machinery of the courts is run with an eye single to making political capital for the radical party and intensifying their hatred toward the South.

"And now gentlemen," the governor said in conclusion, "our meeting here to-day will be without its influence upon a power that can 'kill and make alive.'"

At the conclusion of the speech of the governor, it was resolved that messengers should be sent to the president with full power to enter into any treaty or compact for the maintenance of peace and order, and that Governor Ainsworth and Colonel Seymour shall be charged with the execution of the mission.

[CHAPTER VI.]

THE MILLS ARE GRINDING.

It was the hour of high noon that a gentleman and lady alighted from a carriage at the foot of the mansion of Colonel Seymour without previous announcement. The gentleman was a person of attractive presence and perhaps forty-five years of age. The lady was not attractive, a little patronizing in her manners, and perhaps thirty-five years of age. Their patois was that of English people; to an artistic ear, however, this may have appeared feigned. Their manner in the presence of the host was unconstrained; indeed they expressed themselves with unusual freedom. The gentleman gave his name as Mr. Jamieson, and the lady as his niece, Miss Harcourt, both of them lately arrived from London. He had interested himself, he said, in scientific researches for the past few years, and was now pursuing an inquiry that he hoped would be of practical use to the South. The "London Society," whose agent he was, was seeking from all available sources the most exhaustive information about the negro in his gradations from the savage to the citizen; and he took occasion to say that his principals had been greatly astonished because of the alarming strides the negro had made in a country that, less than a century ago, made the British power tremble in its very strong-holds. He would be pleased to ask if this sudden transition from slavery to freedom had not reversed the orderly procedure of the government in respect to its administration in the South. To this inquiry Colonel Seymour replied, quite epigrammatically, "that the world had no precedent for the revolutionary measures which were being enforced in the South."

The stranger continuing, observed that he had desired this interview before exploiting a field untried and perhaps dangerous; and he would be greatly obliged if his host would be as frank and communicative as possible.

In the course of this interview, the arguments employed by the stranger disarmed the old man's suspicions, and in a confidential way the Colonel told Mr. Jamieson that he would communicate his knowledge of the matters as far as he could, but feared it would not be of much value, as he was under suspicion by the Federal authorities; having fought under Lee in the many battles of the South, he was still vehemently protesting against the invasion of his own country by the carpet bag government.

"You were, then, a Confederate soldier?" inquired the stranger.

"Yes, and was paroled at Appomattox," sententiously rejoined the veteran.

"Now, my dear sir, you greatly interest me; may I inquire your rank in the Confederate army?"

"I was a Colonel of cavalry, sir."

"Were you at Gettysburg, sir?"

"Yes, and was wounded as we were falling back to the Potomac."

"Gettysburg! Ah, yes!" the stranger observed reflectively; "this battle was quite disastrous to the South, I believe, and was claimed by the North as a great victory."

"And what upon the face of the earth have they not claimed?" excitedly replied the veteran.

"Ah yes, they are a boastful people," said Mr. Jamieson. "I doubt not they claimed victories they never won. You of course are still of the opinion that the South was right?"

"No opinion about it. I know she was right. We never resorted to hostilities until our institutions were assailed."

"I am sure your statement is correct, sir," said the Englishman. "While our government, then in the control of a radical ministry, was officiously unfriendly to the South, your government had a great army of sympathizers in England who deplored its downfall; indeed, the president of our society was an active sympathizer with your country, and the bank in which he was a director, upon his private account emitted bills of credit that were used by the agents of the Confederate government in the purchase of materials of war. I presume, sir," continued the Englishman, "you would have no hesitation in going to war again if the same casus-belli existed?"

"No indeed, sir."

"And you are of opinion that it would not be treasonable to oppose the policy of the government in respect to its acts of reconstruction?"

"If armed with adequate power, I should not hesitate in respect to my duty in the premises," replied the veteran with a show of temper.

"I am very glad, sir, that you have been entirely frank with me," said the stranger, "and I fully appreciate your feelings. I suspect that you do not think that a strongly centralized government in any contingency is the least oppressive form of government?"

"Assuredly not, sir. Nature has established a diversity of climates, interests and habits in the extensive territories embraced by the Federal government. We cannot assimilate these differences by legislation. We cannot conquer nature. Other differences have been introduced by human laws and adventitious circumstances, very difficult, if not impossible to be adjusted by Federal legislation, hence the necessity of local legislatures with adequate powers, and a general government with its appropriate powers."

"I presume, sir," said the stranger, "that you cannot conscientiously support the reconstruction measures of Congress and the president?"

"I cannot and will not, sir," responded Colonel Seymour with emphasis; "and if you were advertant to that point of time in the history of our late war when, from sheer exhaustion, the South laid down its arms, you would not ask the question. There were hundreds of thousands of patriotic men in the North, who, upon the question of the emancipation of the negro, concurred in its propriety, yea, its necessity, but who denounced those reactionary measures that were crystalized and enforced with cruelty against the South. In our judgment these measures were not only extra-hazardous, but inherently oppressive. It would have been a pernicious power in the hands of an intelligent, conservative, law-abiding people, but most deadly in the hands of ignorant, unscrupulous and truculent officials. You must remember that the South, in a metaphorical sense, was an immense area sown in grain ready to be harvested, with its hedges trampled under foot and destroyed, and inviting cattle and swine to enter and devour. The herds came greedily through every gap, and like the wild beasts upon our western prairies, depastured and consumed almost the whole."

"How wonderfully recuperative have been the energies of your people sir," interrupted the stranger.

"Yes, but will you allow me to proceed?" replied the Colonel; "We believed that when the war ended, the people of the South relying upon the pledges made by the union generals in the field before the armies were disbanded; on the negotiations preceding the surrender; on the proclamation of President Lincoln; and the publications of the press; as well as upon the terms actually agreed on between Grant and Lee, and Johnson and Sherman, at the time of the capitulation of the Confederate armies; that when resistence to federal authority ceased, and the supremacy of the constitution of the United States was acknowledged; and especially after the ordinances of secession were repealed, and an amendment to the constitution, abolishing slavery wherever it existed, was ratified by the legislatures of the insurrectionary states; that a full and complete restoration of the southern states to their former position of equal states would at once take place; and after the exhaustion of such a war they hailed the return of peace with satisfaction; they acknowledged defeat; accepted the situation, and went to work to rebuild their waste places and to cultivate their crops. The men who composed the union armies, found on their return home, a healthy, prosperous, peaceable and well organized society; while the government with a prodigal hand freely distributed pay, pensions, and bounties. It was not so in the south; society here was disorganized; the strain upon the people to supply the armies in the fields had exhausted their resources; labor was absolutely demoralized; the negroes being freed, in their ignorance and delusion were not slow to understand their changed condition, and became aggressive, riotous and lawless. Under such circumstances it was impossible to restore harmony in the civil government without the utmost confusion; yet so earnestly did our people struggle to return to their allegiance and thus entitle them to the protection which had been promised, that from the day of the surrender of the Confederate army, not a gun has been fired; no hostile hand has been uplifted against the authority of the United States, but before breathing time even was allowed, a set of harpies, many of whom had shirked the dangers of the battle field, pounced down upon our people to ravage, plunder, and destroy. All remonstrances, entreaties, resistances were stifled by the cry of treason and disloyalty and by the hollow pretence that the plunderers were persecuted because of their loyalty to the Union. A system has grown up in the South with obstinacy, whereby great protected monopolies are fostered at the expense of its agricultural labor; then follow the series of offensive measures known as the reconstruction acts; but one further observation sir, and I have done. The English people had no just conception of the oppressions want only inflicted upon the South; of the insolence and rapacity of the carpet-baggers and freedmen who were made our masters."

There was quite an interval before the stranger replied.

"Your address sir has been a revelation indeed; it is a lesson of great educational value and I sincerely hope I may hear you again. Would you care to present your views in writing?"

The Colonel without any suggestion of evil said to the stranger. That possibly at some future day he might find the leisure to do so.

"And now you must allow me to thank you, before leaving, for the courtesy you have shown. I shall take pleasure in reporting this interview."

Colonel Seymour upon entering his wife's chamber remarked to her "I have found a friend in need; an Englishman who was delightfully entertaining and who represents certain humanitarian interests. I expect to hear something very flattering to the South when he submits a report to his principal."

Mrs. Seymour who had passed that period in life, when she could look hopefully upon anything, observed quite sadly. "I hope it is so, my dear husband; I hope the future has very much happiness in store for you; but I am suspicious of strangers who seem to have no other business with you, than to obtain your views upon the unhappy events that are girdling our home as it were with a zone of fire." "Ah," exclaimed the husband, "you do not understand, perhaps your opinion will change in a few days."

"I hope so" the sick lady replied feebly.

We pretermit events more or less irritating to follow the urbane Englishman. The reader has perhaps surmised that he was an agent of the secret service bureau. This was true, as Colonel Seymour learned to his sorrow, within forty eight hours after the man and the lady dropped out of the wide open arms of the old mansion. But how could a southern gentleman withhold knowledge when sought under such a disguise. He spoke as he felt; and if the weapons that he used to punctuate his expressions were boomerangs that impaled him on its points, he could not help it. Anywhere, everywhere, he would have spoken his convictions without concealment, without equivocation. Laflin came to Ingleside; came to foreclose a poor man's liberty, without a day of redemption. The old man saw the offensive carpet-bagger approaching the mansion and met him sternly with the interrogatory. "What is your business?"

"Ah!" sneeringly answered the carpet-bagger, "that is a fine question to ask a gentleman. Do you recognize that seal sir" he continued, handing the old man an official requisition bearing the broad seal of the department of justice upon it "you will perhaps conclude, sir, that it will be compatible with your safety to return with me; I promise you a safe conduct to Washington."

"I will go with you" replied the old man with all the suavity possible, "but you will allow me to prepare for the journey."

"Certainly sir," said Laflin, "but I must see that you do not provide yourself with arms."

"I do not want my house polluted by your presence," cried the old man in the vehemence of his feelings.

"Then you shall go as you are," gruffly replied the carpet-bagger.

Alice had but little to say to the man, knowing that entreaty or expostulation would be unavailing, and Clarissa slunk away from him as if he were the forerunner of the plague. When the Colonel arrived in the village he saw the white-haired governor with his overcoat upon his arms, and his valise and umbrella upon a chair beside him. He knew intuitively that their missions were the same, that their destination was Washington.

"What are you doing here governor?" asked Colonel Seymour.

The dejected man replied deliberately, "I am going to Washington sir. May I ask your destination as I observe you are traveling too?"

"You see my guide, do you not," answered the Colonel with a frigid smile.

"Yes and I am informed he is mine also; so we shall not get lost on the route shall we?" answered the governor lugubriously. "I presume we shall have a suite of rooms at the old capital," asked the Colonel provokingly.

"Perhaps so, if the President doesn't invite us to the executive mansion. I hope he will do this as I have no bank account North, and but little currency in my pocket," replied the Governor in irony. "By the way Colonel," continued the Governor, "did you have an elegant gentleman and his niece to call upon you a few days ago? Quite an interesting man was he not? I hope we shall have a good report from him when he returns home."

"And were you confidential toward this man?" asked Colonel Seymour.

"Why yes, quite so," replied the Governor innocently. "I found him so agreeable and so intelligent withal, that I told him all that I knew and I am expecting great things when I hear from him."

"Do you think, Governor," asked the Colonel quizzically, "that the Englishman has given us free transportation to Washington to be examined and punished as suspects?"

"Why my dear sir" replied the old Governor, "you alarm me. Is it possible we are the dupes of a government spy so clever and intelligent?"

"That is my opinion, sir," replied the Colonel.

"Is it possible? My, my, my!" he ejaculated, and sank back in the upholstered seat, and after awhile fell asleep.

These were men who had made the wager of battle for eleven proud commonwealths and lost; men coming now with their patriotism repudiated, to be told that their traditions were treasonable, their principles insurrectionary; to be badgered into compliance; to be scourged into submission; men who believed with a living faith that they had given American reasons for convictions that ought not to be challenged, coming now heroically to receive their doom.

The Governor, on entering the great judgment hall with Colonel Seymour, was surprised to see in the person of the chairman a highly honored colleague upon the committee of ways and means in the congress of 1858. The recognition was mutual, and the distinguished chairman descending from the dais, demonstratively grasped the old Governor's hand, exclaiming, "My dear sir, what has brought you here?" The excess of joy experienced by the Governor quite overcame him, and for a moment he did not answer, but he replied after awhile as coherently as he could, that he had never been informed of the charge against him.

"Ah!" replied the chairman sympathetically, "That is indeed regretable, but the discipline of this court does not contain within itself the germ of an arbitrary prerogative. No man, however bitter may be his opinions shall be condemned unheard." The Englishman, under the alias of Mr. Jamieson appeared as a witness in the person of Jonathan Hawkins.

It is unnecessary to go through the trial that followed. "You are at liberty," said the chairman, at its conclusion, "to go wheresoever you will. You shall be safeguarded while you remain in the city, and we shall exert our utmost to protect you and your interests at home. Mr. Laflin," he continued, "you will procure passports for these gentlemen whom you have brought here without a pretext of reason."

Our old friends, taking up their hats and canes, returned their grateful thanks to the honorable commission, whose judicial fairness was so praise-worthy; and turned their faces homeward; the Governor exclaiming through his clenched teeth, "The infamous, villainous Englishman!"

"Why, bless my soul, Governor," exclaimed the Colonel in a startled tone, "What an opportune moment to have carried out the wishes of our meeting!"

"What meeting do you refer to sir?" asked the Governor in surprise.

"Why, my dear sir, had you forgotten that we were deputized to visit the authorities in Washington at the meeting presided over by Judge Bonham?"