TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.

“Ham Sterns, I reckon you know ME.”— Page [190].

OTHER FOOLS
AND THEIR DOINGS,

OR,

LIFE AMONG THE FREEDMEN.

BY ONE WHO HAS SEEN IT.

NEW YORK:

J. S. OGILVIE & COMPANY,

29 Rose Street.

Copyright
1880.
By J. S. OGILVIE & CO.

CONTENTS.

OTHER FOOLS
AND THEIR DOINGS.

CHAPTER I.
THE BEAN ISLAND PEOPLE.

“O Tam! hadst thou but been sae wise
As ta’en thy ain wife Kate’s advice!”

—Tam O’Shanter.

It was April, 1876, and Deacon Atwood and Captain Black were riding along the sandy highway in the sparsely settled vicinity of Bean Island, in the State of South Carolina.

Though the sun shone uncomfortably hot, neither the men nor the horses they bestrode seemed anxious to escape its rays, for they traveled quite leisurely several miles, till they reached a point where the road forked.

There they paused a few moments, and continued their conversation in the same low, earnest tones they had previously employed.

The Deacon was fifty years of age, large, broad-chested, red-faced, with full fiery red beard and thin brown hair, which gathered in sodden, tapering hanks about his short neck and large ears; and his pale-blue eyes looked out of little triangular orifices on either side of a pyramidal nose, upon the apex of which was balanced a narrow forehead of a “quirked ogee” pattern. His hands were large and freckled, and he kept them in constant motion, like his huge feet, which seemed even too heavy for his clumsy legs. His snuff-colored suit, and the slouched hat he wore on the back part of his head, were dusty with travel.

His companion was younger, taller, and less stoutly built than he. His eyes were large and dark, and his head, crowned with bushy black hair, was poised upon a long, slim neck. His manners indicated more culture than the Deacon had received.

“Well, Deacon,” said he, rising in his stirrups, “we have submitted long enough, and too long, and there must be a change: and I am bound to do my share to secure it.”

“And I won’t be behind yo’, Cap’n,” replied Deacon Atwood. “These niggers must be put down where they belong, and the carpet-baggers driven back where they came from.”

“It’s doubtful whether many of them would be received there. I apprehend that the most of them “left their country for their country’s good” when they came here. A man don’t emigrate for nothing, and I expect they have been run out of the North for some mean acts, and have come to the South to prey upon a conquered people.”

“I reckon that’s so, and I wonder how yo’ men that ’a’n’t no church obligations on yo’ ken keep from swearing when yo’ think of it. I declar, when I get to turning it over in my mind I get so mad that I can’t hardly keep from it myself. As yo’ war saying, it reaches everywhere. Less than half the people is white to be sure, but then we own nine-tenths o’ the land, and yet we must be taxed to support nigger schools, and niggers and carpet-baggers in all the offices, and new offices trumped up where there a’n’t enough to serve them as wants ’em—health officers in every little town, and scavengers even, under pretense of fear of yellow fever, to give salaries to dumb niggers as don’t know nothing only how to rob Southern gentlemen, and all sorts of yankee “public improvements” as they call ’em! Why, I’m taxed this year to mend a road that runs down past me there, and nobody but niggers never travels on it. It is positively insulting and oppressive!”

“Well, Deacon, I suppose your statement that niggers and carpet-baggers are in all the offices might be called a slight exaggeration, but then we could sit here till dark and not finish enumerating the grievances this State government, backed by that Cæsar Grant, at Washington, imposes upon the people of South Carolina—those that ought to be the ruling class—the South Carolinians.

“But the best thing we can do is to take hold of these military clubs and work them; and in that way bring about a better state of things. I, for one, am determined this State shall go Democratic this coming fall; and if we unite in this method I’ve been explaining to you, we can effect it. Just bring this Mississippi method up in your club to-night—or support Lamb, if he does—and we’ll whip the rascals. Nigger voters are too thick—must be weeded out!”

“That’s just what I’m going to do,” replied Deacon Atwood; “and in order to do it, I reckon we’ll have to go on.”

“Yes; my sabre club meets this evening, too, for drill. So good evening!”

“Good evening, Captain.” And the two men separated. The Captain kept the main road, and the Deacon took a sort of back, plantation route, seldom traveled except by the farmers residing upon it, where he soon fell into deep meditation, his chin dropping upon his breast, and his respiration becoming slow and heavy. His old white horse, even, seeming to pass into a similar state of somnambulency, walked dreamily along, till his nose, far down towards the ground, came in contact with a fresh and tender shrub, around which his long tongue instinctively wrapped itself, and he came to a full stop.

“Hud up!” said the startled Deacon, gathering up his bridle with a nervous jerk; and his small eyes quickly swept a circle around him.

With something like a shudder and an audible sigh of relief, he composed himself again, for only a quiet landscape had met his vision.

A swampy forest was on his left hand, and long stretches of scrub palmettos, interspersed with cotton-patches, on his right.

Seeing two colored men at work in one of the latter, and probably feeling a need of human companionship, he rode up to the crooked rail fence, and shouted “Howdy?”

“Why, howdy? Deacon, howdy?” was the friendly response, as one of the men laid down his heavy cotton hoe, and approached the fence.

“How is work, January?” asked Deacon Atwood, pleasantly.

“I gets along mighty well, I thank yo’. I hope yo’ do,” said the freedman, who, though about the age of his neighbor, was too much accustomed to being addressed as a boy, and by his Christian name, to take offense at the familiarity.

“Well, I’ll be blamed if yo’ niggers don’t get along better’n the white folks! These confounded carpet-baggers are larnin’ yo’ how to fleece us that owns the land, and blowed if yo’ ain’t doing it!”

“Why, Deacon, I don’t know what yo’ mean. I ha’n’t been fleecing nobody, I’m shor’. If God Almighty gives me my freedom, and gives me strength to work what land I’m able, and makes the crops grow, why ha’n’t I a right to get ’long? I can’t see who’s hurt, not to my serious knowledge?”

“It a’n’t yo’r working, it’s yo’r voting. Yo’ vote them villains into office, and they’re bleeding the country to death with taxes. Now, we a’n’t gwine to stand it. All the gentleman has agreed together that yo’ve got to come over to our side. It’s for yo’r interest to be thar.”

“Can’t do it, nohow, Deacon,” replied the negro, smiling good-humoredly.

“If yo’ don’t there’ll lots of yo’ be killed,” said Deacon A., kindling.

“Now, Deacon Atwood,” said January Kelly, deliberately, “I think a parcel of gentleman that was raised and been college-bred, men that would undertake to ride over things by killing out a few niggers—well, I think its a very small idea for an educated man. I think they must have lost all conscience of heart; I think all conscience of heart are gone when they come to do that, I do; but you a’n’t in earnest, Deacon? You’re a Christian man. I ha’nt got no neighbors as would hurt me. I’m a honest man as works hard, and minds my own business, and takes care o’ my family; and nobody ain’t gwoine to kill me, nohow.”

“Oh, no, January; nobody won’t hurt honest, hard-working darkies like you, if they let politics alone; but then there’ll be lots of the leaders be killed, ’fo’ election, if just such men as yo’ don’t come over and help us save the State,” said the Deacon.

“Why the State is all here. I don’t see as it’s lost, nor gwoine to smash, either; and if we have a Government we’ve got to have leaders. If all the men stayed to home and worked land like I do, there wouldn’t be no Government.”

“So much the better,” snapped the Deacon. “The strong could take care of themselves and look out for the weak ones too.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. The rogues would steal and kill all the same, and who’d take care of our lives and our property, and collect the taxes, and build the bridges the war burned down, and the school-houses, and pay the teachers, and all them things?”

“There is too many of them now; and South Carolinians shall rule South Carolina!” broke forth Deacon Atwood, with great vehemence; “and I want you to come over to the democratic party where you won’t get hurt. We’ll all help you if you will.”

“Why Deacon, I thought yo’ was just saying we is getting along the best. I was born in South Car’lina, an’ so was mos’ all the collud people in the State to-day, and ain’t we South Carolinians then? Now all I has got to say is, that it’s a mighty mean man as won’t stand to his own. It war the ’publican party as made me a free man, an’ I reckon I shall vote ’publican long as I breaves! That is all I can say, Deacon. I don’t know no mo’.”

“Hud up!” said the Deacon, and he rode abruptly away.

“What on earth has come over Deacon Atwood, I wonder,” said Mr. Kelley, to a tall, muscular black man, who, swinging his hoe lazily, had at length planted his row abreast with the spot where his employer had dropped his when the Deacon saluted him.

“Talking ’bout politics, I reckon!” was the drawling reply.

“Yes, and he did make some awful threats! Why, Pompey, he said they’d lots of the niggers ’round here get killed ’fo’ election if we didn’t come ovah to the democratic party! Now I’ve hearn that kind o’ talk ever since reconstruction, but I never did, myself, hear the Deacon, nor no such ’spectable and ’ligious men talk it ’fo’; though they say they did talk it, an’ gone done it, too, in some places. He says it’s a general thing now, from shor’ to shor’ this time ’mong the gem’men. He says the taxes is ruining the country, an’ niggers an’ carpet-baggers is in all the offices, an’ the money is wasted, an’ there’s got to be a change.”

“Oh, —— —— him! It’s just the odder way about—shutting up offices—doing away wid ’em, an’ turning de niggahs out to make room for old confederate soldiers! I hearn Kanrasp, an’ Striker, an’ Rathburn, an’ some o’ them big fellahs talkin’ ’bout it dar in Aiken.”

(Pompey had boarded in a certain public institution at the county seat for the greater safety of the contents of market-wagons in the town where he resided.)

“The land mos’ all b’longs to the white folks, sho nuff, an’ the rent is so awful high that a nigger has got to work hisself an’ his family mos’ to death to keep from gittin’ inter debt to de boss, let alone a decent livin’, an’ now the gem’men is bound to resist the taxes fo’ the schools, so our chillun can’t have no schools. I thinks it’s toughest on our side!” said Kelley.

“Kanrasp said de Governor is doin’ splendid,” continued Pompey, “cuttin’ down expenses so dey is a gwoine to save a million an’ seventeen hundred an’ nineteen thousand dollars an’ mo’ in one year; or he did save it last year.”

(Pompey had a memory for numbers, though neither gift nor training for mathematical calculations.)

“Striker, he was mad cause de Governor made ’em put down an’ print just ebberyting wouldn’t let ’em buy no “sundies” or somethings—I do’nt know. De white folks wouldn’t let de niggers have no money in old slave times, an’ now dis Governor Chamberlain dat ’tends to be a ’publican, he makes de nigger an’ de Legislature men as come from de North be mighty careful dey don’t get no cent o’ de white folk’s taxes ’thout printing jes’what it’s all boughtened.”

“Well, now, that’s right and honest like,” replied Kelly, “‘cause they’ve been thieves don’t make it right for us to steal; and then the niggers pays taxes, too, and don’t ort to be cheated neither; and I’d like to know if them ways don’t make the taxes easier? They do say they was a mighty sight o’ stealin’ from the treasury going on thar in Columbya a while ago. I reckon Governer Chamberlain is a honest man, and don’t steal hisself neither.”

“Certainly, de taxes is easier. Lawyer Crafty, dar in Aiken—he’s a democrat too, you know—he joined in de talk some, and he said it is easier’n it was; fo’ de taxes used to be thirteen or sixteen mills on a dollar (if yo’ know what dat means), but now it is only eleven.”

“I don’t prezackly understood it,” said Kelly, “but I know eleven ain’t so much as thirteen nor sixteen; and I do reckon it makes it easier. I reckon it’s mo’ cause the white folks wants all the money and the offices theirselves, as makes the fuss.”

“Yes,” drawled Pompey, “and dey makes any man a carpet-bagger dat wa’n’t baun in de South, an’ some ’publicans as was. De Governor has been in de State, an’ all he’s got, now ’leven year; Kanrasp said so; an’ Cummings—de head teacher o’ de big school in Columby—de Versity dey calls it—he’s been in de South thirty year an’ mo’; an’ dey calls him a carpet-bagger, too, an’ all his boys; but de boys was baun here. But den dey is ’publicans an’ teaches niggers, too, I wonder is dey any carpet-baggers up North or anywhere?”

“I don’t know, I never did hear tell of ’em; but the No’th beat in the wa’, you know. But ’bout this killin’ niggers; I’m a thinken, the Lo’d knows we has had enough o’ that: but I can’t help thinking,” said Kelly, and the two men entered into a long conversation upon the subject which we will not follow, as our present interest is with Deacon Atwood, who had resumed his way with Kelly’s quaint and expressive phrase “must have lost all conscience of heart,” as his constant and sole companion, for he had not yet “lost all conscience of heart.”

Arrived at home, he ate his evening meal in haste and silence, and immediately set out for the hall where his Rifle Club met, accompanied by his eldest son, who was a minor by a few months.

Mrs. A. shouted after him, admonishing to an early return, as she did “detest these night meetings, anyhow.”

The father and son rode in silence, while the short Southern twilight faded, and night settled upon the picturesque landscape, soft as the brooding wing of peace; and balmy breezes rustled through the gigantic long-leaved pines and mammoth live-oaks, and over fields of sprouting corn and cotton; and the dark soil seemed to sleep calmly and sweetly under the white moonlight and a sprinkling of white sand, which sparkled like snow.

“Watson, my son,” said the Deacon at length.

“Yes, father.”

An ominous silence warned the boy of a weighty communication forthcoming.

“I’d rather yo’d ’a ’staid to home to-night, but as I’d promised yo’ going, it couldn’t be helped. I reckon we’ll have an exciting time, but now as yo’ are a going, try to keep cool. Like enough thar’ll be some things said that better not; but as yo’ll be present, now mind what I say, and keep cool. Try to be careful. Don’t get excited nor be imprudent. It’ll do for us to foller the rest. Just let them take the lead and the responsibility.”

“Well, father,” replied the youth demurely, well knowing that his cautious parent would be the first tinder to take fire and lead any conflagration that might be imminent.

It is not to our purpose to report the doings of that political Rifle Club’s meeting—the stirring speeches of citizens of the State, who forgot that they were also citizens of the Nation against which their treasonable resolutions were moved, discussed, and voted; nor the inflammatory harangues of Deacon Atwood; nor the courageous utterances of one little man of broader intelligence and views than his neighbors, who urged that the coming political campaign be prosecuted in a fair, straightforward, lawful and honest manner, which should command respect everywhere, and convince the hitherto intractable colored voters that their former masters were disposed to accept the situation resultant upon the war, and with their support, reconstruct the politics of the State upon a basis of mutual interests, in place of the antagonism of races which had prevailed ever since the emancipation and enfranchisement of the slaves.

While these discussions relieved over-accumulations of eloquence and over-wrought imaginations, they also disclosed the true state of feeling, and the deep smouldering embers of bitterness that once “fired the Southern heart” to fratricidal war.

Unfortunately, good and calming counsels often gain least by interchange of expression with those of passion, and so it came that young men, and men whose years should have brought them ripe judgment, but did not, shuddered the next morning at the recollection of words they had uttered, and decisions made in that club-room, from which it would be difficult to recede.

Betrayed by his sanguine temperament and his implacable foe—the love of strong drink—Deacon Atwood was one of these.

“It’s a pretty pass when a man at yo’r time of life stays out till two o’clock in the mornin’ drinkin’, and mercy knows what, I do declar!” said Mrs. A. as she met her liege lord at the door of their domicile, “And takin’ his only son out to initiate him, too, and yo’ a church officer.”

“Wh—wh—why didn’t yo’ go to bed, Ja—Ja—Janette, I didn’t ex—ex—expect to find yo’ up.”

“No, I shouldn’t reckon yo’ did, judging by yo’ exes. Making a fool and a beast o’ yo’self, and tempting yo’ son, when we’ve been praying for his conversion so long.”

“Wal Ja—Janette, yo’ ’ort to ha’ prayed for me, too, fo’ I’ve made a ’nough sight mo’ fool o’ myself than Wat has o’ hissen. But I’ve been true to the State,” drawled and stammered the Deacon, with thick and maudlin utterance, “and if I could stand as much w’iskey as some on em, I’d a’ been true to myself also. But who’s been here, Ja—Janette?” Vainly trying to stand erect, and pointing with nerveless finger to an armful of crooked sticks that lay upon the blazing hearth. “Who brung ’em in?”

“It wa’n’t yo’, Deacon Atwood; I might ha’ froze to death walking this house, and nigh fainting with fear, thinking some nigger had outened yo’ smoke fo’ yo’ fo’ allus’ on this earth.” (He was fumbling in his pocket for an old clay pipe he carried there.) “I do believe uncle Jesse and aunt Phebe are the best Christians on this plantation. Yo’r old mother took her toddy, and went to snoring hours ago, thinking nothing o’ what might happen yo’—her only son, who she’s dependent on to manage all her thousand acres o’ land; though gracious knows I wish she’d give yo’ a foot or two of it, without waiting to all eternity fo’ her to die ’fo’ we can call an earthly thing our own. I couldn’t get that story I hearn yo’ telling Den Bardon ’to’ther day, out o’ my head, and I war that scarred I couldn’t go to bed.”

“What story was that?” asked Watson, as he hung his whip and saddle upon a wooden peg in a corner of the kitchen where the trio were.

“Why, about that Texas Jack that is around here, killing niggers and everybody; and he don’t have more ’n a word with a man till he shoots him down. If I had a knowed yo’ was coming home tight, father, I’d a been scarred ’clar to death shor’. A pretty mess yo’ll hev’ in the church now, Deacon Atwood! Elder Titmouse’ll be after yo’ shor.”

“Hi, hi, hi,” laughed the Deacon. “Hic, a-hic, a-hic, hi, hi. No danger o’ that, old gal. He’d have to be after the whole church, and take the lead of the leaviners hisself. He’s the Chaplain o’ the Club, and the d-r-u-n-kest man in town to-night. The old bell-sheep jumped the fence first, and helter skelter! all the flock jumped after him. Hick, a-hic. But who, hic, taken that wood, hic, from the yard, hic, and brung it thar?” demanded the head o’ the house, with changed mood, ominous of a coming domestic storm. “Dina’s gone, and Tom’s gone, and yo’ wouldn’t do it if yo’ froze.”

“Wal, now, I was feeling powerful bad, a-walking the house, and crying and praying mighty hard, and fust I knowed I heard a humming and a singing, and who should come up to the do’ but Aunt Phebe, and Uncle Jesse close behind? They reckoned thar was sickness, and they come to help. Now, I call that Christian, if they be niggers. “Why yo’re freezing,” says Uncle Jess, “and yo’ll git the fever.” So he brung the wood and made the fire, and we all prayed for yo’, a heap mo’n yo’re worth; fo’, as I say, I war a thinking o’ Texas Jack. When we heahed ole Duke whinny they went home, and this minute they’ve blowed their light out.”

“Hi! hi! Old gal, we’ve been making Texas Jacks—setting ’em up all night; and they’ll be thicker ’n bumble bees and yaller jackets ’fo’ ’lection. But they don’t know how to kill nobody but radicals—niggers and carpet-baggers and scalawags.”

“Now, Deacon, if yo’ve been setting up anything agin such men as Jesse and Den, and Penny Loo, I just hope yo’ll git chawed up by yo’re own Jacks?” said this Southern aristocratic female Christian, in great ire.

“No danger o’ Texas Jack’s hurting me. He won’t chaw his own arms,” shouted the Deacon, triumphantly. “I’m fo’ defending the State and the white man’s rights; South Car’linans shall rule South Car’lina,” and he reeled about the room, swinging his limp arms, and shouting, “Hurrah for South Car’lina! Hurrah for the old Pal-met-to State!”

“Come, come father,” said his son, “let me help you to bed. You talk like a crazy man.” With the assistance of Mrs. A., the Deacon was soon where his lips were safely guarded by slumber.

“It is a pity you hadn’t let father join the Good Templers with me, but may be he wouldn’t ha’ stuck to the pledge,” said the boy, sadly, as he bade his mother good night.

Near eleven o’clock the next morning, with nerves unstrung, head sore, and stomach disordered, and altogether in an irritable condition of mind and body, Deacon Atwood sauntered out into one of his mother’s fields, where a large mulatto man was mending a somewhat dilapidated rail-fence. The hands of the farmer, were keeping time to a succession of old plantation “spirituals” which rolled from his capacious chest like the sound of a trumpet.

“O, believer, go ring that be—l—l.”

“Don’t you think I’m gwoine to ring that beautiful bel—l—l?”

“This winter’ll soon be ovah.”

“When the bride-grooms comes.”

“We’ll march through the valley in that field.”

“Yo’ seem to be mighty happy this morning, Jesse,” growled the Deacon.

“Well, Deacon, why shouldn’t I be happy? I’m well, and my wife is well, and my children is well, and we’re all about our business, and the children in school a learning, and God Almighty is saving my soul, and raining his spirit into my soul, and raining this beautiful sunshine down unto the cawn (corn) and the cotton, to make ’em grow, and why shouldn’t I sing? Why, brother Atwood, I feel like I’d like to ring that beautiful bell so loud that all the folks in the worl’’d hear it; a proclaiming that the Lord Jesus’ll save every poor sinnah that’ll let him,” and the dark face shone with the spirit-beams that glowed within.

The Deacon winced under the churchly title of brotherhood, and what he thought a covert reproof, but yielding to the power of a stronger and more rational nature than his own, he did not remark upon it, though fondly imagining that he felt himself vastly the superior.

“It is well enough to be happy if yo’ can, I reckon,” said he, snappishly, “but I don’t feel so. I confess I’m thinking more about politics now-a-days than about religion.”

“That’s no wonder then that yo’ a’n’t happy. It don’t pay to get away from the Laud into politics—brings trouble.”

“Oh, a plague on yo’r preaching! We must attend to politics sometime: we can’t leave it to yo’ niggers all the time. The Democratic Party has got to beat next fall, or we’ll all be ruined together.”

“Of course it is right for you to think about politics,” replied Jesse, “and to talk about politics, and to vote about politics, but you know “what-sa-ever ye do—whether ye eat, or drink, or what-sa-ever ye do, you must be a thinking of the glory of the Laud.”

“We wouldn’t have no trouble in carrying this next election if it wasn’t for these leading radicals,” said the Deacon, in an angry mood, which had not been improved by Uncle Jesse’s reproof. “There is not more than one in a thousand of the niggers that knows how to read and write, but is an office-seeker; but I tell yo’, Jesse, every one of ’em will be killed!”

A silence ensued, during which Deacon Atwood repeatedly thrust his heel into the soft soil, and turning the toe of his boot about, as though crushing some reptile, he made a row of circular depressions along the side of a cotton hill.

Pausing in his work, and pointing at the busy, great foot, Mr. Roome (for that was Uncle Jesse’s name) remarked, with a broad smile, “Deacon Atwood, them is nice looking little places you’re making there, but allow me to tell you that I reckon your wife won’t like the looks o’ that black streak you’r making on the bottom of that leg o’ them light-colored trousers o’ yourn.”

Vexed beyond control that he could not disturb the equanimity of the colored man, the irate Deacon now squared himself about, and, thrusting both his itching fists deep into the pockets of the abused articles of his apparel, he looked fiercely into the face of the negro, saying:

“Maybe you don’t believe me, but it is true, and all settled; and I’ll bet you that Elly and Watta and Kanrasp will be killed before another ’lection, and I can give you the names of twenty more that will be killed, and among them is ‘Old Bald-head’” (the Governor).

A shadow passed quickly across the dusky face, and a set of fine teeth were firmly set together for a moment. But that soon passed, and the face wore its usual expression: “What are you going to do with President Grant and his soldiers?”

“Oh, all the No’th is on our side,” was the prompt response. “And if it a’n’t, we don’t care for Grant nor his soldiers. I carried a gun once, and I can again.”

The farmer had completed his work, and, folding his arms, he now confronted his “Boss,” and spoke slowly and impressively.

“Mind, now, what you’re doing, Deacon, for the United States is mighty strong. You recollect once you had two Presidents here, and it cost a long and bloody war, and the country ha’n’t got over it yet.”

“Yes, sir, but the No’th is on our side now, I tell yo’, and we shall be able to carry our point.”

“May be so, I can’t tell,” said Jesse, dropping his hands by his sides, “but I shall be very sorry to see another war started here, and I didn’t live in the No’th from ’61 to ’67 to come back here and believe that the people there is going to stand by you in killing us off to carry the election. Maybe they’re tired of protecting us, and disgusted with our blunders and our ignorance, but they won’t join you nor nobody, nor uphold nobody in killing us off that way.”

“Well, you’ll see we shall carry this next ’lection if we have to carry it with the musket—if we have to wade through blood to our saddle-girths,” said the Deacon. “And more—this black Militia Company at Baconsville has got to stop drilling; it has got to be broken up. It is too much for southern gentlemen to stand—flaunting their flag and beating their drum right under our noses! It is a general thing with us now from shor’ to shor’, and the law can’t do nothing with so many of us if we do break it up, and we’re going to.”

“Now, just be careful, Mr. Atwood, what you say, and what you do. I a’n’t going to uphold our colored folks in violating no law, and you know I ha’n’t, nor nobody else neither. I believe in law, and I say let’s stick by the law; and,” gathering up his implements of labor, “I suppose you’ll excuse me, for I’ve got to go around to the other side of this oat field, by the woods there, and mend that other gap; that is, if you don’t care to walk around that way.”

The Deacon did not care to walk that way, and so the conversation ended for the time; though the subject was frequently renewed during the subsequent summer months, in the hope of inducing Roome, who was influential among his people, to declare for the white man’s party, but in vain.

A scion of a family that, in the early settlement of the State, had procured a large tract of land at five cents per acre, and had retained much of it through unprolific generations by penuriousness that had been niggardly and cruel in its exactions upon slave labor, Deacon Atwood was coarse and gross in temperament, and had received little culture of any kind. All his patrimony had vanished through the war and its results; for the parsimony of his ancestors had formed no part of his inheritance, and he had pledged all for the Confederate loan.

His aged mother—a violent rebel, and a widow before the war—yet refused to pledge her land to raise funds for what became the “Lost Cause,” and found means to retain possession of one thousand acres of cotton land, for the management of which her son was now acting as her agent. Mrs. Deacon Atwood was what the reader has seen her, and not an ill-selected specimen of the average planters’ wives, who but seldom left the schoolless vicinities of their homes; and as her family had fared no better than her husband’s in the general financial overthrow, they were quite naturally and rapidly drifting towards their affinity—the social stratum called in ante-bellum times, “poor white trash.”

CHAPTER II.
DISTRUST.

“The murky shades o’ care
With starless gloom o’ercast my sullen sky.”

—Burns.

“Walk in, Mr. Roome; walk in. Glad to see you. Have a chair? Well, what is the news from Bean Island and Baconsville?”

“Bad, Mr. Elly, bad!” replied Uncle Jesse, as he seated himself, and took from his hat a huge red cotton pocket-handkerchief, with which he proceeded with great deliberation to wipe his dusky face and bald head.

“I did not know it was so warm out,” said the courteous host. “This office is such a cool place that I come up here Sunday afternoons to be cool and quiet. It is a good place to read.”

“I reckon it is not so warm to most folks. I’m hotter’n I ought to be, I know; but I’m worreted,” said Uncle Jesse, still wiping industriously with both hands at once, and then thrusting the handkerchief into his hat which he had been holding tightly between his knees, he placed it carefully upon the floor beside him, and putting a hand upon either knee, he leaned forward, looked earnestly into Mr. Elly’s face, and with a significant expression, and in a low tone asked, “Is you alone, Mr. Elly?”

“Yes; or, but—well, Mr. Watta is in the back office, but I can close the door”—rising.

“No, no,” said Uncle Jesse, raising both hands deprecatingly. “Ask him in; ask him in. Or, why can’t I go in there?” glancing around at doors and windows.

“Certainly you can,” replied Elly. “Did you want to see Mr. Watta?”

“I reckon so; yes. Well, now, this is what I call providential; and I reckon I wa’n’t fur wrong in coming, if it is Sunday. The folks in No’thern Ohio don’t do no business on Sundays, and money paid Sunday a’n’t paid at all—can be collected over again; but work is driving awfully now. The freshet put the cawn back so for awhile; but it is ketching up now. But I knowed I ought to come.”

Handshakings and preliminaries over, the trio were soon seated around a large writing table—colored men all of them. Both Elly and Watta were tall and slender—the former quite black, and the latter very light—and both had enjoyed the blessing of education at a Northern school established for the benefit of freedmen, and almost sanctified to the race by bearing the name of “Lincoln.”

Jesse Roome’s northern experiences had not been with books, save at evening schools, of which he had eagerly availed himself; but his naturally well-balanced mind and keen powers of observation had not been idle; and sensible ideas of common duties and relations of life in a highly-civilized and enlightened community were his reward.

Elly was a thriving lawyer and ex-member of the State Legislature, where he had been “Speaker of the House,” and, ever with an eye to business, he had already scented a fee in his visitor’s troubled manner and reply.

“You must excuse my abruptness, but I leave on the train for Columbia in half an hour,” said he, “and you and Watta can talk after I am gone. Now, what can I do for you?”

“First of all, I want some money for my services as constable; and second I want to talk about the political situation, and to tell you some things I have heard men say that is interested. Well, how I got to know this thing—”

“What thing?” asked the lawyer. “Why, that Elly and Watta and Kanrasp and some score of other radicals, has got to be killed,” said Uncle Jesse, lowering his voice to a husky whisper.

“Ha! ha! ha?” roared Elly, throwing himself back in his chair, till his head seemed in danger of getting wedged between the chair-back and a bookcase behind him. “Why, Roome, I thought you was a sensible man,” said he, when he had recovered his breath. “The days of the Ku-Klux Klan’s are over, and all done in this State. When we punished two hundred and fifty of the fifteen hundred ‘very respectable gentlemen,’ as they called each other, who were arrested in 1871-’2, the thing was killed out here, you see.”

“No, I don’t see,” said Roome.

“But do you suppose a man really means what he says when he talks like that now-a-days?” and the two threatened men laughed, and wriggled in great apparent merriment, and in true negro fashion, though really quaking with fear.

“I certainly do believe it, Mr. Elly, and Mr. Watta, and I only hope the good Laud will show that I’ve been afeared for you for nothing. The parties was in earnest, and intended it, I’m shor’; and you know I’m not a old woman, nor a baby to be scart for nothing.

“I’ve took the trouble to resk my life to tell yo’ to take care of you’n, and now I’ve done my part. I didn’t tell Watta right there to home, because I reckon as yo’ is a lawyer, Mr. Elly, I’d best tell you first, and see what is best to do for your protection. I taken trouble to do this. But Watta is here now, and I’m done,” said the old man in a grieved tone.

“We are much obliged for your kind intentions, though you needn’t have been so much scared about us.”

“Well, now, let me tell you,” and the farmer proceeded to narrate minutely the incidents and facts with which the reader is already acquainted, and others of similar import.

“Give me names and I’ll put them through in the law, for threats,” said Elly.

“I can’t do that,” said Jesse, folding his arms tightly.

“Why not?”

“Because I live in the woods, and my life wouldn’t be worth anything; and I a’n’t going to tell yo’, though you’ll believe me yet.”

“I believe you now, but I don’t believe you’re a white man.”

“You will yet though, I ha’n’t nothing more to say now, but just mind what I tell you. You is both men that is marked to be killed, because you is leading radicals; so the white folks says they is gwine to kill you and a score more right round here close; I can’t help it, but I’ve done my duty, and you must take car’ of yourselves. It wouldn’t be no use to prosecute this man. It would only make the whole of ’em mad, and worse than ever ’em open a hornet’s nest; but I want to ax you this favor, just remember my life now, as I’ve remembered your’n, and not tell that I told you this.”

“Oh, we won’t tell, and we’re much obliged to you for your good intentions but we don’t scare worth a cent, after all.”

Uncle Jesse left the office, and the other men walked down to the railroad station to meet the through train going north.

“What do you think of the old man’s story?” asked Watta.

“I don’t think much of it. He has maintained such an equivocal attitude that it is hard to tell whose hands he is playing into. He has been on one side and then on the other—with the colored people and then with the whites, till there is no telling where he is now.”

“Elly, you are unfair. That man is just as true as steel; he is solid gold all through. He is with the side that is right, that is all, only he has more courage to speak out than some of us have. I reckon the fact is that the right hasn’t always been the colored side. I’m afraid it hasn’t, though we’ve had so much the worst chance since we’ve had a chance at all, and such an outrageous list of grievances to remember, and to bear, that it isn’t an ordinary man that can look at things fairly here.”

Now, I have a mind to think there is something serious in this matter, and that there will be more and more as election approaches. The white men at Baconsville are awful mad, because our Militia Company has been reorganized lately, and has been preparing for the centennial Fourth of July. One would think they expected to be massacred in their beds; and so they go to work and do things that might make every nigger mad at them. Sensible, isn’t it?

“They are just raving, the white men are, some of them, and they do talk dreadfully. Old man Bob Baker there, gets into a passion whenever he sees us drilling on Market street. He hates to see a nigger he has hunted in the swamps before the war, and his dogs couldn’t catch, or could, practicing the use of arms with a State gun in his hands, and the Union flag over his head. He is like a mad bull, and “the stars and stripes” is the red rag that sets him a roaring and tearing up the ground.”

Here Watta, the speaker, slapped his companion’s shoulder, and both broke into a loud laugh.

“He has got an idea,” he resumed, “that all the roads within five miles of his plantation belong to him, I reckon, by the way he swears whenever he meets or passes the Company. I tell the boys to give the flag an extra spread whenever he is in sight, and we have it out.”

“It is the flag of the Union that you carry, and you are the National Guards of South Carolina, too,” replied Elly.

“Well, it is cutting to the old rebel and slave-hunter!” he continued. His occupation is gone, gone forever; and I don’t suppose he or his trained blood-hounds take kindly to such cheap game as possoms. There is a mighty sight of brag and bluster about these southern whites, though they’ll dodge quick enough at sight of a United States musket with a Yankee behind it. They hav’n’t forgotten their whipping yet.”

“Yes, but they’ll dodge back again just as quick, when the musket and Yankee soldier are withdrawn, and they are fast forgetting the past; and this centennial year and celebration are unwelcome reminders of it which they would like to resent.”

“Well, yes, I reckon so. You see the mention of the rebellion as one of the hard strains which the Union has survived cannot well be avoided, and so the “red rag,” as you call it, is in their faces pretty often if they take a newspaper, or steal the reading of one. There are only five white men, ‘gentlemen,’ who call upon me regularly to get the reading of my papers, free of course, and call me a ‘nigger.’ They don’t take a single paper themselves, nor buy one, nor say ‘thank ye’ for mine; nor always think to ask if I have read it myself.

“Ah, there she comes! right on time;” and Elly closed and pocketed his gold watch, while the train approached the platform.

“You’ll see, Jesse? Please get that name out of him, and I’ll put the rascal through for threats; though I’m not afraid of him. Good day,” and with the grace of a courtier he waved adieu to his friend, as the train moved away.

He was soon comfortably seated, and gazing out at the window. He was very well dressed, in strong contrast with a large majority of his race in the southern States. His tall shining hat lay beside him upon the crimson plush cushion of the seat, leaving his crisp and glossy frizzed hair the only covering of his shapely head.

Among the occupants of the car were many “northerners” returning from winter residences in Florida.

“We talk of the receding foreheads and projecting jaws of the African,” said a lady sitting opposite, in a subdued tone to her masculine companion, “but just imagine those two men with hair and complexions exchanged,” indicating Elly and a man in the seat immediately in front of him, who was in a double sense, a fair specimen of southern “poor white trash.”

“‘Now, deil-ma-care about their jaws,
The senseless, gawky million,’

“As Burns says,

‘I’ll cock my nose aboon them a’,’

“For I’m bound for dear New England, away from this land of rags and dirt, slatterly ways, lazy habits, flowing whiskey and tobacco, narrow brows and wide mouths, and people of all imaginable shades, from ebony to cream-color or white,” replied the gentleman. “If you like to continue studying and comparing these faces, do so; but don’t suggest it to me, for I long to be where the very air is not darkened with—‘nigger, nigger’ and my ears shall rest from the sound of their uncouth voices.”

“Their voices are expressive. You should call out the smooth tones.”

“But I can’t always. I’m sure I can’t forget the night of our arrival at Jacksonville,” he continued, “Thirty, weren’t there fifty black men standing near that train, all barking their loudest for passengers? Yes, you may reprove me, I know these don’t sound like the words of an abolitionist. But I am one, I insist; but if upon oath describing that sound that greeted our arrival in that city, I must say the voices of ‘thirty yelping curs;’ and to pass through among them, with their grabbing for one’s baggage, and those frightful sounds in one’s ears, and the knowledge of the unsettled state of the country—the antagonism between the races—I’d as lief—well, I don’t know what I wouldn’t choose!”

“Yes, but if, when that big-mouthed, two-fisted fellow grabbed your satchel, you, instead of striking him with your cane and umbrella, had looked kindly into his great-rolling eyes, and mildly said you preferred to walk and carry it yourself, I think he would have dropped it as quickly, and more quietly, and been more likely to remember you kindly. I remember quite similar scenes in the North, with Irish hackmen. But we have outgrown them; and so will the South, and the negroes out-grow these scenes; and for me, the more I see these colored faces, the more that is intelligent and agreeable I see in them.”

Elly’s face had been singularly bright and cheerful before over-hearing this colloquy; but then a change came, and presently he leaned out of the window, gazing at a large dilapidated mansion (it could not worthily be called a ruin,) which stood some rods from the railroad.

Many a day he had played about the door of a poor little cabin in its rear, or ran at the bidding of his young mistress as she walked in a small grove the train was just then entering; or had held the bridles for the gentlemen mounting at the door of “the great house,” watching well their movements, least, as is the habit of some men to cut their dogs with their whips and laugh at their yelps and leaps, they should thus enjoy an exhibition of his agility.

Under that great tree, in the edge of yonder cornfield, his mother writhed under the lash, for complaining that her task was too heavy; and obliged to witness the rising of the great welts upon her naked back, his father had snatched the instrument of torture from the hand that wielded it, and on an attempt being made to dispossess him of it, had dealt the overseer a smart blow across the back of his hand.

Then had followed a gathering of “the hands” from that and neighboring plantations, to witness the “maintenance of discipline,” and Elly’s father—a valuable specimen of plantation stock—was made, under the cat o’ nine tails, a physical wreck.

Beside that old decaying cotton-house, now scarcely visible, his oldest sister was once hung up by her hands and severely whipped, because she preferred field labor by the side of the father of her child, who was called her husband, to what was called an easier life—in “the big house after Missus got sick, and was agwoine’ to die.”

Next, the train rattled over a long stretch of spiling though a cane-brake, where were familiar trees, under which Elly had paused for breath, and standing upon their knotted roots, listened to the baying of pursuing blood-hounds; and so vivid was his recollection of this, his first attempt to escape from slavery, that the sick, cringing, trembling feeling returned as he observed the bent canes leaning away from the half-submerged ties of the railroad track; an involuntarily moving of his feet upon the car floor, as if again seeking a footing upon their bent stalks, a semiconsciousness of present circumstances was restored, through which his mind leaped over the terrible capture and chastisement, and he seemed again to hear the sounds of the “Yankee Camp,” and felt the joy of his happy entrance there, a “Contraband of war,” but a chattel slave no longer.

Then came a realization of the inestimable service the “Yankee Governess” had rendered him when she stealthily taught him to read, and spurred his young master’s lazy efforts, by contrasting his acquirements with those of the listening slave boy.

Through that poor beginning, made in weakness and danger on the part of both pupil and teacher, when it was a crime, punishable by imprisonment in the State’s Prison, he had made his way to positions of honor and emolument.

What meekness, humility and honesty must not a man of such experiences possess, if, conning them over, pride did not lift up his heart, resentment make his arm restless, and a sense of robbery long-endured, make his present powerful position seem a providential opportunity for retaliation and self-reimbursement! From an abyss of enforced degradation and ignorance and despair he had emerged into the light and life of personal and political liberty, equality, respectability and honor; and the young master whose opportunities he once so earnestly coveted, and before whose absolute will he was forced to bow, now sued for favors at his hands, and found “none so poor to do him reverence.” Was ever the nobility of human nature put to stronger tests than in these two peoples?

“Good evening, Mr. Elly,” said a broad-browed, florid-faced, red-haired man in the aisle beside him.

“Good evening, Marmor, good evening;” was the hearty response. “Take a seat?” removing his hat to make room.

“I will gladly take the seat, if you will just step out and let me turn over the back of this one in front, so that we can have the use of the two sofas, for my feet are at their old tricks and troubling me a good deal. They are easier when I lay them up. One might as well personate ‘Young America’ in this Centennial year when it makes him more comfortable.”

“Mind you don’t get them too high now,” said Elly, as they seated themselves after the change, and he spread a newspaper upon the cushion before them, to protect it from Marmor’s boot-blacking. “You might share the misfortune of Ike Partington; and if all your brains should run down into your head, what would become of “The Times?” and Elly laughed and wriggled, in strange and silly contrast with his usually dignified manner.

“I don’t furnish brains for “The Times”, said Marmor, “I only publish it. But what is the campaign going to be, do you think?”

“Oh, of course we shall win.”

Marmor kept his eyes fixed upon his middle finger nail, which he was carefully cutting, and did not reply.

Elly scrutinized his face awhile, and then asked, “Don’t you think so?”

“I am not so positive as I wish I was.”

“You don’t think the colored voters of the State are going back on the party that gave them freedom, and the only one that will preserve it for them? They’ll all vote the Republican ticket, of course.”

“Yes, unless they are intimidated.”

“Now, Marmor, I’ve seen a hint—or what I take for one—in your paper; but I hope you don’t really think there will be trouble.”

“I am afraid there will be trouble. Hanson Baker told me the other day that there are fifteen hundred men ready and waiting to come there and break up the Militia Company in Baconsville, and that they are going to do it; and it is a frequent boast among the men—the white Southerners, I mean—that they will carry the election if they have to do it at the point of the bayonet. They can’t do it honestly, that’s shor’; but I’m afraid there will be trouble.”

A pause ensued, after which Marmor resumed. “I’m almost tired of this State, and if my business could be squared up I’d get away; but I shan’t be driven out. I wish the colored people had the spunk to emigrate to some of the idle western land. It is a heap better and richer than this here, by all accounts; and though it might be some colder, it would make them stronger and smarter, and they’d be heaps better off than they are here.”

“There are a great many talking about it, don’t you know—going by colonies? It would be a deal better than going to Africa. I shall go myself if the old Confederates ever get into power here again.”

“See you stick to that, Elly; and, as for me, I reckon I shall have to go by that time, or before. I was born in South Carolina, and shed my blood in defense of her (as I thought then), at Fort Sumter, got wounded there, and I was as good as any of them till I consented to accept a clerical office under a Republican administration; and then the old Confederates persecuted me and my wife, till I found out how it felt to others, and I have seen under what tyranny a man lives here. He dares not think for himself at all. I served under Hampton in the war, before I got my eyes open. Like most of the private soldiers, and plenty of commissioned officers, I was made to believe a lie, or I never would have raised a hand against the National Government in the world. I used to say just this way: If the No’th would only let us manage our State matters ourselves, and would let our slaves alone (you know I owned a few slaves), I didn’t care if the Territories and new States were free. But Lincoln, and Garrison, and Greeley shouldn’t come down here, and take our nigger property away from us; they shouldn’t be emancipated by the United States Government—the slaves shouldn’t. Enough others said the same, and dozens of our speakers said it on the stump and platform, and plenty of the great leaders were right there—consenting by their silence, if not saying the same things, when they knew well enough that these were just the principles of the Republican party—the ‘Unionists’ who elected Lincoln. What did we care for their ‘sympathy for the slaves,’ or their wishes for the ‘constitutional right’ to liberate them, so long as they admitted they hadn’t got it, and we knew they couldn’t get it short of a two-thirds indorsement by the States through a direct vote of the people? There was slave property enough in sixteen of the thirty-four States to make us pretty sure on that score, in addition to the interests of cotton manufacturers and sugar dealers in the No’th who wanted our products and no interruption of business. Then we had the Fugitive Slave Law for the return of our runaways.”

“But you know the Republican idea was that the new States coming in, being all free, they could at last secure the constitutional two-thirds.”

“Yes, at last” said Marmor, derisively, “at the last great day, while slave-owners had each a vote for three out of every five of his slaves without asking their assent. But our hot-headed course hastened emancipation about a hundred years; and now that it is over I’m glad of it, though it did cost an ocean of blood and treasure. Slavery cursed the whites as well as the blacks, and ought to. When I think of all I saw in that war—I got this difficulty in my feet there (moving them with a grimace), and of the horrible sufferings it brought on our people, and how those leading villains knew all the time that they were deceiving us, I can’t think what wouldn’t be too good for them! And when that war was over, and the No’th had us in her hand as helpless as a trapped mouse, she not only spared their lives, but gave everything back to them which they had forfeited; and now you hear them go on about the National Government and the northern people, especially any that come and settle among us and try to develop the resources of the State, in a way that is simply outrageous! You would think the South was the magnanimous patron of the stiff-necked and rebellious No’th. I verily believe the South would have liked the No’th better if it had put its foot upon her after she fell. Conquer your rebellious child or yield to his dictation without demur.

“There are some who know no such thing as equality. Somebody must be the ‘Boss’, in their practice.”

“But republican principles would not allow the government to hold these States as provinces,” remarked lawyer Elly.

“They should have been held as territories,” said Marmor, “consistently or not. My blood is German (my father emigrated from Germany to Charleston when a small boy), but it has got the South Car’lina heat in it. I’m for efficiency.”

“Nineteen-twentieths of what they call carpet-baggers, and make folks believe are just adventurers, are northern men, capitalists generally, who in emigrating did not leave their manhood behind. It matters not how heavy taxes they may pay, nor how long they remain in the State; if they vote the Republican ticket and maintain the principles and practice of equal justice for all men in the State, they are ‘carpet-baggers;’ and if they vote Democratic, according to the will of the confederate whites, though they vote ‘early and often,’ and at points far removed from each other, they escape the opprobious epithet.”

CHAPTER III.
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH.

“Plumes himself in Freedom’s pride
Tyrant stern to all beside.”

—Burns.

On an insignificant little village built on a narrow flat beside the Savannah river, the sun had been pouring his red hot rays all day, with even greater intensity than was usual at that season of the year.

The inhabitants, however, paid little heed to the extreme heat, and only when the sun sank to the western horizon did they leave their fields and workshops and wend their ways homewards.

Two railroad bridges, and another for the public highway, connected this little village with the city of A——, on the opposite side of the river, and in the neighboring State of Georgia.

A long low trestle carried one of those railroad tracks two or three squares or streets back from the stream towards the hills a half-mile away.

Not far from this trestle, on a broad street which ran parallel with and along the brink of the stream, stood a strong, two-story brick building. Its uses had been various; but at the time of which we write it did service as an armory or drill room for Co. A of the Eighteenth Regiment of National Guards of South Carolina; and also as a dwelling for the Captain of the Company, who, having just returned from his day’s work in the city, now sat with his chair tilted back against the post of the open door, tossing his infant and conversing with his wife, who was preparing their evening meal.

It might be mentioned that the parties in this little domestic scene were of African descent.

“Howdy? Cap’n Doc, Howdy?” shouted a negro teamster, driving up to the door with a great dash and rattling of wheels.

“Hello! That yo’, Dan?” replied the Captain, letting the front legs of his chair down upon the floor with a bump that came near unseating him. “Come in, won’t ye?”

“I’m obliged to yo’, but I couldn’t nohow. I just wants, to know what sort of a combustification is we gwoine to hev to-morrow; and when does de militia come out?”

The speaker was evidently “the worse for the drink,” which must account for his forgetfulmess of what he had been well informed of, and he wriggled and giggled as if greatly tickled.

“The militia,” said Captain Doc, “has got to faum (form) and march down to the grounds, when the doings begin, and stand guard; and after the speeches and all is ovah, we shall go through the usual everlutions, accompanied with music and the flag. I’m sorry we didn’t get that shooting-match I tried to have, so we could ha’ got some unifaum; but I shall inspeck yo’s guns and accouterments mighty close, and put yo’ through mighty sharp on the drill.”

“But a nigger that don’t car’ ’nough ’bout the Centennial fo’th o’ July to get to know all ’bout the doings fo’ the third o’ July, don’t ’zerve to be baun free and ekil.”

“Wal, I wa’n’t baun free an’ ekil, an’ I don’t ’speck to be baun free an’ ekil, nuther, but ’fo’ I done gone ovah to ’Gusta wid dis ere load o’ truck, I knowed all ’bout it. But I met dat are magnifishent young gem’man, Tom Bakah, and, oh, laws!” (spreading his horny palms, with fingers extended and rolling his head and eyes from side to side), “‘mose put my eyes out o’ my head! All upsot my idees! His nose turned up, ’pears like six feet high; no, six inches high; and he drove he horse so scrumbunctious like, ’mose upset my little ambulancer,” and Dan turned to his two little rats of donkeys in harness of knotted raw-hides, which resembled old and assorted clothes lines.

The little creatures stood meekly before an indescribable vehicle, a ridiculous cross between a rude hay-rick and a huge crockery-crate on wheels. It was all out of proportion to the little team, whose backs were scarcely as high as the waist-bands of stumpy Dan.

“Tough little fellahs, dese is,” said the teamster, patting them affectionately, “but mighty feared o’ Mars’ Tom, a’n’t yo’,—Eigh, Jack?”

“See dat nigh critter cock his eye now, and wag dat off ear,” continued Dan, winking at Captain Doc, and giggling and wriggling as before.

“Don’t like Mars’ Tom, do yo’, Jack?” again addressing the intelligent donkey, which not only wagged his off ear, but shook his head in a most decided manner, to the great amusement of his owner.

“Oh, Dan, you musn’t mind the antics of that boy Tom,” said a voice behind him; whereupon Dan wriggled and jumped, and whirled about, and bowed himself double, and made grimaces, and giggled and wriggled, and danced a jig; and finally, with another low bow and long scrape of his right foot, he shook hands with the speaker, who was no other than our friend Marmor. “Tom is only just home from school, you know, and of course the man who knew more before he was born than could ever be cudgeled into that knowledge-box of hissen, is nothing to him! Let him alone, and let him swell though, just as big as he can, he’ll bust the quicker, and we’ll find out the quicker how big he really is when the vacuum is gone, and what is left is packed down solid.”

“‘Pears like dis yere young Tom cat tinks he smell a mice, or a niggah he’s huntin,” said Dan, “an’ he’s gwoine fo’ to chaw ’im up mighty quick!” (suiting his gesture to his words by a long sniff, and a quick motion of his jaws.)

Dan’s buffoonery was irresistible, and the half dozen persons who had gathered at the captain’s door manifested their appreciation by hilarious applause.

“‘Pears like I couldn’t leave such ’stinguished comp’ny, nohow,” he continued, “but dey is a panoramia fo’ my vishum which am decomrated by hoe cakes an’ hominy, an’ lasses an’ bacon, an’ sich tings;” and with his hands upon his empty stomach, Dan bowed very low and obsequiously, and mounting his “ambulancer,” gathered up the ragged ends of his raw-hide ribbons, touched Jack with his long green stick, and rattled away, while Captain Doc shouted after him, “Two o’clock, and no tipsy men on parade.”

The queer little turnout, which would have been a spectacle in any part of the northern states, though common enough in the southern, crept slowly up the steep hill in the rear of the village, where buildings of curious and indescribable styles were scattered without order or taste, and few indications of thrift. Stopping on the outskirts of the town, and before a small cabin built of one thickness of rough boards, the vertical cracks between which would nearly receive the fingers of an adult, and the windows of which, without sash or glazing, were closed only by clumsy wooden shutters—the usual style of cabin inhabited by the southern negro—Dan leaped from his vehicle, and entering, sniffed and looked about searchingly, till a tall, angular mulatto woman entered from the back door with an armful of wood.

“Any suppah yet, Mira?”

“No, sah. Yo’ suppah ha’n’t ready yit, but I’s cookin’ it. I’s mighty tired. I’s done done all dat whole big cotton field.”

“Good, chile! good, chile!” said the husband, approaching and attempting to kiss her as she stooped to replenish the open fire.

No sooner had his breath touched her face than she turned, with a stick of wood in one hand, and confronted him, while the smoke and flame leaped out in alarming proximity to her dress.

“See here now, yo’ Dan; yo’ been drinkin’ gin,” fixing her dark eyes reprovingly upon his silly face. “Dat’s de way yo’ been spendin’ yo’ money.”

“Mira Pipsie, yo’s de smartest woman in de whole worl’. Yo’s got ’em zackly, I reckon” (wriggling and curveting about the room and back to her side again). “I nebber boughtened me no finery o’ no kind; no new bonnet, nor nuffin. Yo’ buys what yo’ wants, an’ so does I.”

“Yes; but yo’ comes home an’ wants suppah, an’ it’s de cotton o’ my raisin’ as buys yo’ suppah.”

“Yah! yah! yah! I’s a lucky dog, shor!” and he executed a jig followed by a double shuffle, knocking his heels upon the bare floor with what vigor he could command, and at the same time improvising as follows:

“I’s de smartest little wife
Ebber seen in all yo’ life;
She marks her cotton-bag
Wid a little calico rag,
An’ gits de biggis’ price,
An’ as slick as any mice
She smiles, an’ bows, an’ flies aroun’,
An’ totes her cotton off to town.
Home she comes, an’ O my!
See de new bonnet! Oh, my eye!
Away to church she sing an’ pray,
Hallelujah! look dis way!
Dina Duncan’s in de shade,
Mira beats all on dress parade.
But jes’ see Dina’s bran new shawl!
Can’t heah no mo’ preachin’ af’er all.
Elder, I’m gone nex’ Sunday sho’,
Can’t wear dis here ole shawl o’ mine no mo’!”

Here the song abruptly terminated, for the “smartest little wife,” who was some inches taller than her husband, and by no means slender, took her liege lord by the damp, unstarched collar of his soiled blue shirt, and marching him to the door, seated him upon the step, saying in a low, decided, and well recognized tone, “Now yo’ jes’ set dar, yo’ drunk niggah, yo’, an’ don’t yo’ open dat big red mouf o’ yo’n no mo’ till I git some hominy to fill it up. I don’t want no niggah’s heels scratchin’ roun’ on my flo’. Ef yo’d buy bettah finery ’n dem ole trowsahs, an’ go to church, an’ let whiskey ’lone, yo’ cotton’d be some good. Ef I didn’t mark my cotton o’ my raisin’, an’ toat de money myself, I’d jes like t’ know whar yo’d git yo’ tea, an’ coffee, an’ flou’h, an’ all dem tings?”

With an admonitory shake of her finger, she entered the house, and resumed her culinary operations; but soon reappeared, bearing a gun and accoutrements, and sundry materials for polishing them; having first dexterously examined it, and found it without charge.

“Heah now, yo’ Pipsie; yo’ got sense ’nough t’ clean dis ’ere gun?” she asked. “Reckon you’ll be mighty proud o’ dis ’ere ‘finery,’ marchin’ up an’ down long o’ de res’, an’ de folks all lookin’ on.”

“He, he! Didn’t I say ‘smartest little wife’? Reckon I kin do dat are. Reckon I’ll p’rade on de fo’th, an’ yo’ll wait till Sunday.”

Two of his neighbors presently joined Mr. Pipsie, with whom he was soon discussing the anticipated celebration, which was quite a novelty in the locality. Suddenly a loud sound of wheels was heard.

“Hello!” cried Dan, springing from his seat. “Heah comes my friend Bakah! Hello, Babe! Bett’ take car, dat team, else yo’ git toated clean off, an gone to smash ’fo’ yo’ muddah knows nuffin ’bout it. Reckon yo’ didn’t ax her mout yo’ gwout alone?”

The sound of the jolting wagon rendered this speech inaudible to the youthful driver, who was passing without a “Howdy!” (an offense in that locality) but the loud, derisive “guffaw” of the three colored men, which followed Dan’s sally, did not fail to reach him, and he paused suddenly, just past the door.

He was tall and large, but unusually boyish for a youth of twenty years. In an angry tone he shouted:

“Dan Pipsie, come out here! I want to see yer.”

That individual made his way, quite deliberately, to the side of the vehicle, and with a strange mixture of timidity and bravado in his manner.

“What do you mean by cursing me in that way? I ha’n’t done nothing to you,” said the boy.

“Oh, laws! I’s jest in fun, an’ I’s shor’ yo’ didn’t heah yo’r name mixin’ up in it. A man’s a right to talk or cuss on his own do’,” (door) “an’ nothin’ to no man no’ his boy gwoine ’long de road.”

The youngster’s eyes flashed, and his face was pale with rage. What! he to be called a boy by a “nigger?” He looked down upon the diminutive black figure beside him, in whose hands was one of Remington’s best rifles, and that alone restrained him from laying the long lash of his driving-whip close about the “black biped,” as he mentally called him. He did venture to retort with some asperity.

The altercation was brief, but heated, and soon the whip was cracked decidedly closer to Pipsie’s left ear than was comfortable to its owner.

“Yo’ jes be little mo’ ca’ful, yo’ young man!” said Pipsie, rubbing the ear briskly. “Yo’ not got no runaway niggah slave heah now. I’se a free man, an’ got as much rights as yo’, an’ mo’n dat, too, I’se got a United States gun heah, an’ I knows how to shoot, too. Yo’ needn’t ’sult no National Guards fo’ nuffin’. Ef yo’ ha’n’t got no mo’ yo’ want say t’ me, yo’ bes’ jes’ git ’long ’bout yo’ business, or yo’ may git hurt!” and he made a feint to raise the empty gun to his eye, when young Tom Baker rode away in great haste.

Baconsville had never witnessed such a “celebration” as it enjoyed the next day, which came bright and beautiful.

Though usually tardy in morning rising—possibly from dread of the malaria, which the sun dissipates by nine o’clock, on this memorable day, the inhabitants of the village were astir at an early hour, for, through the heavy fog which crept up from the river, and shrouded the whole valley, the red-haired and fair-skinned Marmor, and the largest, strongest, and blackest citizen, with a few followers, were dimly visible, dragging a blacksmith’s anvil along the principal streets.

They paused frequently in front of the residences and shops of the chief citizens to salute them by an explosion of gunpowder upon the anvil—the nearest approach to a cannonade possible in the impecuneous little city. But not earlier than four o’clock in the afternoon was the excitement at its height. At that time the brass band was playing national airs under a great oak tree on a vacant plot of ground on which a platform had been erected; and a few seats placed in front of it for the accommodation of the gentler sex were rapidly filling; for, at a safe distance, thirteen explosions upon the anvil, in commemoration of the thirteen original colonies, were being followed by thirty-seven, in honor of the then existing States of the Union.

These were the recognized signals for the commencement of the most important exercises of the day; and the militia having formed at the armory, marched to the rostrum, bearing the “Stars and Stripes,” and were disposed on either side of the speaker’s stand, while other free and patriotic citizens stood in compact groups near and about the well-filled seats.

All being ready, a chairman elected, the glass of water and bouquet of flowers placed before the speaker, and the band having duly discoursed, a short, smooth-voiced negro—an accredited preacher of the Methodist persuasion, and member of the State Legislature from that district—was introduced. He made a long, peculiarly energetic, interesting and instructive address, rich in metaphor and quaint expressions, glowing with native eloquence, and abounding in graphic description, wholesome counsel, and eulogy of the “United States.”

Not an allusion was made to the past relations of the races in the South, unless an exhortation to gratitude towards the United States be so construed, in view of the fact that the very few whites present acknowledged no such debt.

After the address, music followed, and then Marmor was formally introduced to his neighbors, and read in clear, loud tones the inevitable “Preamble and Declaration of Independence,” to the manifest disgust of a small group of men who stood in the rear of the crowd.

A tall, muscular man, with iron-gray hair and bushy beard, turned upon his heel with an oath, saying: “Marmor, the contemptible radical, takes too much pleasure in reading that preamble to me, and I’m a fool to hear it any way. All men created equal! It is a self-evident lie!” and he strode away, followed by the boyish young man, Tom, to whom the reader has already been introduced.

“Father,” said he, “that red-headed fool acts like a Yankee. You wouldn’t suppose he fought for the Lost Cause.”

“It is the cursed German blood in him!” replied “the old man Baker,” as his neighbors called him. “He hasn’t been in the State long enough to get the Republican taint out of it. His father wasn’t born here.”

“It is a pity that a Yankee bullet hadn’t hit him, instead of brother Will.” He’s a scalawag and a carpet-bagger, both in one.”

“Yes, I’d like to rid the State of his presence, and the niggers of one leader. If it wasn’t for the leaders, we could manage the ignorant ones.”

The exercises at “the stand” closed at five o’clock, and the Militia soon formed, thirty or forty strong, and marched off up Market street; which being over one hundred and fifty feet in width, afforded ample space for the evolutions which the men performed with commendable precision for nearly an hour.

At length they stood resting at the upper end of the street.

“Have you noticed the clouds, Captain?” asked the tall second-lieutenant, approaching his superior with raised cap, “That’s so, Watta,” replied Captain Doc, glancing at the clouds, “We’ll march down to the armory and dismiss. Attention, Company.”

The necessary orders being given, they proceeded by fours, interval march, open order, with guns across their shoulders, and arms over their guns; thus occupying little over one third of the width of the street.

Soon after they had thus started, a single buggy occupied by two young men, turned from Main street into Market street, entering it two or three streets in front of them and approached the advancing Militia-men at a slow trot. The horse was old and steady, and neither the glittering guns, nor flag, nor fife and drum disturbed his equanimity; and, urged by his driver, he did not pause nor turn aside till in the very face of the soldiers, who had already halted.

The road was broad and level, but the travel had been confined mostly to one track, and the remainder of the surface was overgrown with grass and May weeds.

Just at the place of their meeting, a well occupied a few feet in the centre of the street; and a shallow ditch crossed the half of the street at the right of the vehicle. Yet fully fifteen feet of the level highway was unoccupied at the right of the Militia, and the driver could easily have passed around the Company, had he chosen to do so, instead of urging his horse directly upon the advancing column.

The discourtesy of this act was aggravated by the fact that the young men had, during a half-hour previously, been driving leisurely from one bar-room to another, or sitting in their carriage and watching the movements of the Company in common with a large number of other citizens, both white and colored, during which time frequent opportunities had occurred in which they might have driven up the then totally unoccupied street.

These young men were Tom Baker and his sister’s husband, Harry Gaston, who, like his father-in-law, had often expressed his aversion to “the Nigger Militia Company.”

Captain Doc left his position, and approaching them said:

“Mr. Gaston, I do not know for what reason you treat me in this manner.”

“What manner?”

“Aiming to drive through my company when you have room enough on the outside to drive in the road.”

“Well, this is the rut I always travel in,” was the contemptuous reply, made with an oath.

“That may be true,” replied the Captain, “but if ever you had a company out here, I should not have treated you in this kind of a manner. I should have gone around, and showed some respect to you.”

“Well,” retorted Gaston, “this is the rut I always travel in, and I don’t intend to get out of it for no niggers!”

“You don’t intend to break up our drill do you?” asked Lieutenant Watta; his yellow face growing visibly pale.

“All I want is to pass through and go home.”

“But you want to drive through our ranks.”

“No! ——. He can’t go through here,” said another voice.

“We will stay here all night before we will give way to them,” said Watta, the conversation with lawyer Elly and Uncle Jesse recurring to his memory.

“Never mind,” said Gaston with an oath, “you won’t always be insulting me. You had better stop now, for you’ll find you’ve got to.”

“Egh, Watta, don’t yos’ mind what Mann Harris said—tole that Hanson Baker, Tom’s brother, said a month ago that there’s gwoine to be the —— to pay in Baconsville pretty soon? Reckon the white folks is begun that p’ogramme he tole ’bout,” said another militia man. “He said fifteen hundred of ’em was ready to break us up, an’ of co’se Gasten’s one of ’em.”

A volley of oaths and abusive epithets was rolling from Tommy Baker’s lips; which was indeed their most familiar utterance when addressing persons of color; and some members of the company began to return the charge in kind.

“Attention, company!” shouted Capt. Doc. “It is going to rain, and we had best house our guns. We won’t hold any contention with these men. Now, yo’ hush up! I’ll settle this matter. Open order, and let them go through.”

The command was obeyed, but not without murmurs of discontent, which, however, were soon quieted, as a slight shower descended, and they hastened off to the armory.

Marmor, with his two little children, had been standing a few rods away, watching and praising the exercise.

When the altercation occurred, being a Warden of the town, he sent John Carr, the Town Marshal, or Chief of Police, to ascertain its cause; but it was passed before his arrival at the scene.

CHAPTER IV.
LEGAL REDRESS.

‘O thou dread Power! whose empire-giving hand
Has oft been stretched to shield the honored land!’

So trivial a quarrel as that narrated in the closing part of our last chapter, had it occurred elsewhere than in a community in which the inhabitants had so recently sustained the relations of masters and slaves, would scarcely have elicited remark upon a subsequent day; but over the three or four hundred colored, and forty or fifty white residents of Baconsville there settled a dark cloud of anxiety and apprehension of coming evil.

Angry looks and threats of violence on the part of the whites were recalled and anxiously discussed by the colored people, as were also the recent and frequently expressed determination to “carry the next election for the Democratic Party, if even through blood waist deep,” though the colored voters were largely in the majority, and almost without exception, if unintimidated, voted the Republican ticket.

These, with the oft-repeated boast that the illegal Rifle Clubs, trained cavalry companies, were ready to co-operate for the suppression and utter dispersion of this colored company of State militia, with the fact that similar acts of violence were by no means new experiences to the ex-slaves in the South, but were even then being perpetrated in the surrounding country, made the outlook for the colored population gloomy, indeed.

On the other hand, the officers of the town, with the single exception of our friend Marmor, were all of the colored race, and as he was a Republican native, he was even more repugnant to his white neighbors than a “nigger.”

On the other hand, during the two months preceding this encounter, these militia-men were known to have been drilling as often as once or twice a week, though the law required such practice but once a month. This alarmed the whites, with whom anticipations of “insurrections” are still either congenital or feigned.

In the days of slavery, and also by the South Carolina “Black Code” (the only exclusively white legislation in the State since reconstruction), arms were strictly forbidden to the negroes, and under heavy penalties; yet, through the subsequent Republican legislation, they rejoiced in being the “National Guards,” bearing the same flag which Sherman “carried down to the sea,” and under which Captain Doc learned tactics and heroism in the “Black Regiment,” which once swept over Fort Fisher, and closed the last port of the rebellious States.

What signified it to those conscience-accused whites that these were poor men maneuvering by the light of the moon to save the expense of lighting their drill room; and, unable to spare time from their toil, they took it from the hours of their rest, to prepare for a creditable performance on the Nation’s Centennial birthday? So much the worse. The Fourth of July was the birthday of the “national nonsense” that “all men are created equal;” and it was not the fault or credit of these white men that there was left a nation to celebrate its Centennial.

Now that the sole militia of the State was enrolled from this emancipated race (white men would not enlist under charters, because unassured that they should not be subordinated to colored officers, and they might be required to sustain a State government of the colored majority), how should one expect the former masters to be content and at ease, even though no concerted outbreak had ever occurred among the freedmen, whose temper is naturally peaceable and timid even to servility?

Undoubtedly, the fears of those once reputed hard masters, or who still find it difficult to conform to the new conditions, are often distressing. They are also nature’s incontrovertible testimony to the wisdom and divine origin of equal rights.

Great was the excitement of the Baker families when the young men arrived with the tale of their “narrow escape from the militia men.”

Early the next morning, the old slave-hunter and his three sons set out for the office of Trial Justice Rives, who, though a colored man, it was thought could be more easily induced to meet out punishment to those miserable offenders, than Louis Marmor, who was the only other competent magistrate in the town.

Of course, as has been the custom of the whites there, from the earliest settlement of that country, these gentlemen all wore their side-arms, and for greater safety these were put into the very best condition, and fully loaded, as they suspected the Town Marshal, who ran after them on the previous evening, might attempt a counter-arrest for the same offense.

Young Tommy did not feel quite safe from Dan Pipsie without his eighteen-shooting rifle in addition; and so, with it in hand, he mounted his young bay horse, while beside him rode his brother-in-law, Harry Gaston,—the best shot in town, bearing also his carbine; while the father and his eldest son, Hanson, were seated in a light wagon in which were placed additional firearms, lightly covered with a lap-robe.

Thus equipped, they proceeded in safety, through the quiet little village to the Justice’s office; and finding it closed, went two miles further on, to his plantation, and returned with him to his office; quite a formidable party to be sure. Arrived there, they entered complaints against Dan Pipsie for threats to kill, and against the officers of the Militia Company for “obstructing the highway.”

The Justice, being himself Major-general of that division of the State Militia, after thoughtfully scratching his crispy locks awhile, said:

“I reckon it is best to hear a statement of the testimony, and then decide whether it is a case for court-martialing, or for trial under the civil law.”

Ten o’clock of the next morning was fixed as the time for hearing the case.

At that hour Justice Rives was found seated behind his desk, and busily examining papers and documents.

The Bakers made their appearance, accompanied by a few friends, among whom were two professional men—a Reverend, and an M. D.; though not with compresses and consolations for the possible wounded and dying, (for South Carolina chivalry does not fight its duels with “niggers,”) but with bail money (modified from bullets), should that counter-arrest, which they feared, be attempted.

Automatically, or through force of habit, each race in the southern States still assumes, in assemblies, the positions and attitudes imposed in the days of slavery. In the churches of the colored people one or more of the most desirable seats are reserved for whites, and these often remain vacant, or nearly so, during a lengthy service, while church members stand to exhaustion for want of seats.

Hence, the front seats of Gen. Justice Rives’ court-room were occupied by the plaintiffs and their friends, and the defendants and their friends sat at a respectful distance in the rear, while a number of boys and women of color gathered outside of the door.

The magistrate, who had not altogether escaped the envy of his less fortunate neighbors, had often been accused by them of a sycophantic weakness for the approval of the whites; while the latter declared that justice could not be obtained by them before a colored officer, and that, as a political canvass was approaching, they would not again submit to negro magistrates.

He therefore felt his position peculiarly trying, especially when he saw that they were all thoroughly armed.

He held both his official positions by appointments of the Governor, to be sure; yet he knew that the preponderance of wealth, intelligence and bravery was with the white race; while at the same time he did not forget that if “a traitor to his race,” he would probably, through ostracism and insult, reap a bitter retribution from his own people.

A peace warrant was, however, soon issued against Dan Pipsie, his “Daddy” being present to give bail for his future good behavior. Then, with some apparent reluctance and nervousness, the Justice called the principal case.

Mr. Watta arose and announced that lawyer Kanrasp, from the county seat would appear for the defense.

To this Robert Baker strenuously objected, as, not having been advised that attorneys would be employed, he had none. He therefore asked a postponement of the case.

Kanrasp then suggested to his client that inasmuch as the proceedings had thus far been very informal—the paper served being neither a writ nor summons, and not at all a legal paper—he would withdraw from the case, and let Rives take judgment if he chose, when the case could be appealed to the Superior Court, where justice might be had.

This he did on account of the extreme indignation manifested by the Bakers and their friends.

Gaston, who was a shriveled, weason-faced specimen of the genus homo, with sandy hair, flaming whiskers, and a face in which whiskey held a profusion of freckles in purple solution, was the first to testify, which he did in accordance with his views of the affair.

“Now, Captain,” said the Judge, when Gaston had finished, “as you have no counsel, you may question the witness if you want to.”

Captain Doc was a well-made, medium sized and shrewd man, little less than forty years of age, with very dark complexion, having three-fourths African blood.

He arose from his seat quite slowly, and squarely fronting Gaston, asked:

“Mr. Gaston, did I treat yo’ with any disrespect when I spoke to yo’? Didn’t I treat yo’ politely?”

“I ca’n’t say that you treated me with any disrespect; but I can say this much, that there was two or three members of your company that showed some impudence to me, and I also saw them load their guns.”

“Mr. Gaston,” replied the Captain, looking searchingly in the eyes of the little man, “didn’t yo’ see me examining the cartridge-boxes and the pockets of the company, to see if they had any ammunition before we went on drill?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did yo’ see any?”

“No.”

“I did. I found one man with a cartridge in his pocket, and I took it away, and scolded him about it.”

Gaston replied, “Yes, I saw that.”

“Well then, are yo’ certain that these men loaded their guns?”

“I saw them moving them, and I thought they were loading them.”

“And so yo’ came here to swear that we wanted to kill yo’? That’s about as much as a colored man can get for his care not to give offense. A man is a fool to go out of his way for any of yo’ white folks anyway. Yo’ had no right to aim to drive through our Company as yo’ did; but when I gave in and got out of yo’r way, and let you go ‘long—gave yo’ the road that b’longed to us—yo’ just come heah with such a lie as that against us.”

“Captain, I don’t want you to treat my court with contempt,” said Rives, severely. “If you can’t address the gentleman more politely you must sit down.”

“Judge, I don’t mean no contempt,” said Doc, in a conciliatory tone, “not if I know myself. I never expect to treat no lawful court with any contempt. I was only asking questions, but if the questions is not legal, then I don’t want to ask him. I won’t ask no mo’, but leave it to yo’r discretion,” and he sat down.

“Well, sir, to sit down without permission is contempt of court.”

With such an air of drollery as only a negro can assume, Doc sprung to his feet again, saying—

“Yo’ mus’ pardon me sah. I’s not accustomed to law offices. If sitting down or anything else is contempt, I’m asking yo’r pardon this minute; for I didn’t mean to contempt this court.”

“It is contempt, sir!” thundered the judge, “and I put you under arrest, and dismiss this court till July the 8th at four o’clock in the evening.”

Some protestations were made on account of the lateness of the hour, but Rives insisted he could not leave his plantation labor earlier, and immediately declared the court adjourned.

Neither the day nor hour was satisfactory to the complainants, as it was on Saturday afternoon, when many country negroes were certain to visit the village shops, stores, and market; but as the whites were more generally masters of their own time, it is possible Rives feared he might need the presence and support of his own race should he not condemn the accused.

Harry Gaston was enraged and strutted about like a bantam cock; his face became almost livid, and his hands nervously bobbed in and out of the breast pockets of his short coat, where rested a well-prepared pistol on one side, and a flask of whiskey on the other. Alas, the flask knew little rest.

“I pray you be calm, my dear nephew,” said the Reverend Mr. Mealy, who, though inwardly seething, was so enswathed in his own innate mealiness, that he was measurably cool. “Do not allow this degraded black to disturb you. Remember your position in society. You have been raised by me as my own son. Do not disgrace yourself and me by condescending to dispute with one in his station, and of his color,” and grasping the young man’s arm, he moved towards the door.

Lieutenant Watta, who had been sitting beside his Captain, now sprung to his feet, and grasping Doc’s arm, rushed towards the door, attempting to lead him out.

Doc, however, hung back, and having extricated himself, said in a low tone, “Watta, keep cool!” and he sat down again.

“I won’t keep cool!” retorted the lieutenant. This white-livered judge has shown partiality. Look at the arms in this court room! and Rives is afraid!” (with a sneer.) “They may shed my blood if they can, but I won’t keep still and see my captain arrested for contempt just because in questioning, he got ahead of these unrebuked and cowardly bullies when you humbled us all, on the Fourth of July, to avoid a fuss and concilliate their lordships;” and the enraged man strode out of the building, threw the gate back upon its hinges, and standing in the opening thus made, drew himself to his full height, and threw out his empty palms exclaiming

“I carry no arms; but we’ve got arms.”

“Yes, you’ve got arms, but you’ll see how it’ll be yourselves!” said Hanson Baker, who had been haranguing the people outside the court house. “There’s a fellow from Texas here, two or more of ’em, and they’re going to kill that Town Marshall, and nobody isn’t going to know who done it, and then they’ll leave.”

“What does he or they know about John Carr, the Marshall?” asked a very large, but irresolute-looking black man.

“He’s been informed of his character, and I tell you John Carr won’t be living in this town three months, neither will some o’ the rest.”

“How about that Harmony Case?” asked the same voice (a case of massacre of blacks).

“Well, I wasn’t there, but they done it, and there’s a programme laid down for the white folks this year.”

“That is wrong,” said a voice.

“Well, if it is wrong, it is no matter; it’ll be done all the same. There is no laws now.”

“Ha! ha!” laughed the crowd, the whites applauding, and the blacks deriding the threats.

“Does yo’ pretend to say there a’n’t no law in the State now?”

“No, there a’n’t no law in this State, nor any other State. It’s been a hundred years since the Constitution of the United States, and it’s played out now, and every man can do as he likes. We’re going to get Chamberlain and his crowd out o’ the State House.”

“How about Grant? You know he’s President.”

“By——! we’ll have him too.”

“Take care, that is treason,” said another.

Harrison Baker and Watta proceeded, each with his harangue, and paid no heed to each other, till the plaintiffs and their friends crowded out of the building, pistols in hand, ready for instantaneous use.

A frightened old mammy bawled out, with great eyes rolling, and great hands waving, “See the pistols and guns! See the pistols and guns! Oh, Lor’! they ort to be shot down theirselves!” but the next instant she cowered under the same fierce gaze of the “old man Baker,” which had made many a stalwart runaway stand tamely after the dogs were taken off and while the shackles were put on.

“Uncle, Uncle, let me go,” said Gaston impatiently, striving to free himself from that worthy’s grasp. “I want to shut that yellow chap’s mouth with this little bit of lead. The judge ought to arrest him, but I’ll take his case if you’ll let me go, I’ll give him a mouthful to chaw!”

“Shut my mouth, would you?” retorted Watta, who had caught the words as the two men approached the door. “You’ll find that hard business before you are through with it, if you try. The whites have ruled us long enough. Two hundred and fifty years they bought and sold us like cattle, till the United States set us free; and since then, colored citizens have been tied and whipped, and shot, and murdered in cold blood, and driven from their homes, and their property destroyed, to this day. But it is all no matter here before this white-livered judge. It’ll take a regiment to tie and whip me, or spill what black blood I have.”

“Do not speak to him, my nephew,” said the Rev. Mr. Mealy.

“A regiment!” cried Gaston, with a sneer. “Let me go and whip him myself;” but the readiness with which he yielded to the pressure of his uncle’s hands, was amusingly in contrast with his words.

“We will have this matter settled by law now, and know whether we are to be run over in this way. We will know which are to rule this place—the blacks or the whites,” said Rev. Mr. Mealy. “We’ll know what rights this militia company have. They have got an idea that they can do whatever they please. We’ll have it settled now.”

“This court is a mockery of justice,” continued Watta. “Look at those arms on the side of wealth, and an unarmed poor man arrested for contempt, because he has a dark skin and cornered his opponent by lawful questions. The next time a white swell rides into our ranks while we are on parade we will see that he doesn’t take us to court for obstructing his way.”

Rev. Mr. Mealy, Dr. Shall, and General Rives were active and nearest in efforts to control the now highly incensed Baker family and Gaston; and an influential colored man succeeded in getting Watta out of the street. With deep muttered threats and oaths, the Bakers and their friends at length betook themselves to their conveyances and their homes.

Captain Doc conversed with the constable, in the justice’s office, while the latter official went to his dinner and returned. Re-entering, Rives approached, and extending his hand said good-humoredly, “Shake hands Doc.”

“I don’t know,” replied he, with averted eyes.

“Yes, you will. I couldn’t help it. You was bearing on so hard that they would have shot you in two minutes more. I did it to save you.”

“Is that so, judge? Then here’s my hand. I didn’t mean no contempt; but if I’ve contempted you, or your court I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right now, and I’ll remit the fine. Now let me tell you, you’d best settle this matter somehow, if it is possible. I’m afraid trouble will come of this. I wish Watta had ’a’ kept still.”

“So do I. He’s a marked man now, shor’, and his life an’t worth much,” said Nat Wellman, the constable.

“Settle it?” said Capt. Doc. “Major General Rives, nothing will settle it but to let the company be broken up. I won’t do that, and my oath to the State, that I have taken as Captain, wonldn’t let me if I wanted to.”

“I can’t see the end of this yet, I can’t,” said the Judge, with a sigh, as the trio separated.

CHAPTER V.
PREPARATIONS.

“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world,
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.”

Casca, in Julius Caesar.

The 8th of July, 1876, was an exceedingly hot day, and few white residents of the State of South Carolina ventured out of doors in the hotter hours, though, as is usual, the colored race needed less caution to avoid sunstroke.

About nine o’clock, A. M., two gentlemen issued from an attractive residence, which was situated on a slight eminence on the outskirts of a little village called Enfield Court-House. Leaving the broad piazza, they walked leisurely down the gently sloping lawn to the street. As they closed the gate behind them a covered buggy passed, in which was seated a middle-aged man who bore a decidedly commanding air.

His hat lay upon the seat beside him, and the light hot breeze lifted the long iron-gray hair which lay upon his shoulders, and fluttered his linen duster and the loose flapping curtains of the carriage with a cool and comfortable appearance.

His horse was fresh, and so spirited that the neatly-gloved hands of the gentleman were well-exercised in controlling him.

He found time to gaze at the two gentlemen upon the ground, however, but gave no sign of recognition, save possibly a little more lofty elevation of the head.

“The General is off on professional business, judging from his manner and duster,” remarked the elder of the two pedestrians.

“I often find it hard to repress a smile, even in his presence, at his wondrous pomposity. What kind of a business would he do in the North—Ohio, say—with all his airs? He wouldn’t have a client.”

“Oh, yes, he would. There are plenty of people everywhere, who never know what estimate to put upon others till they, or some one else tell them. But the General’s “airs,” as you call them, are his stock in trade here.”

Both men laughed heartily.

“But to think of a man passing his neighbor and State Senator as he did you, Mr. Cone! He should respect your office, at least.”

“Ah! that’s what he does not do when a radical is the incumbent. He was once quite condescending and affable to me, when I let politics and education alone, and didn’t meddle with them at all.”

“Meddle! Senator! Who has a better right than you to take an interest in politics?”

“Young man you forget yourself, you must learn meekness and discretion—not to put too fine a point on it—or you will get into trouble.”

“But we are immensely in the majority,—the State is really in our hands. Why should we cringle and bow to this haughty minority just because the blood of their families, is in our veins, mixed with various proportions of African?”

“But you’re a ‘nigger’!”

“True, and they used to say that black men had no rights that white men were bound to respect. That was their day. This is ours.”

“Ah, but I want a better pattern for my life than they have been. I say, because we are in the majority, let us take all the honors and offices we can, but wear them meekly for our safety’s sake, and fill them honorably for conscience’s sake. Good morning!” and the twain separated to go, the one to his law studies, and the other to his duties as planter and legislator.

We will accompany the General. Right through the torrid heat he kept on, over hill and valley, only stopping occasionally to cool his reeking horse in the shade of some friendly tree, or to converse with some white man whose house he entered briefly, or whom he beckoned to his carriage if within call.

At length he descended a long hill, and, reining his horse below the bridge, he drove into a small stream, where, in the shade of some overhanging trees, he paused a few moments, allowing his horse to drink while he hastily pencilled a few figures in his notebook. Adding them up he shook his head thoughtfully, and said, in a low tone: “That will not do. Which way next?”

On looking up, he descried a horseman descending the hill before him. Driving out of the water, and regaining the road, he awaited his approach.

“Howdy do, General?” said the equestrian, pausing beside the carriage. “Hot day this.”

“Infernally hot, Dr. Wise!” and he grasped the extended hand, as he wiped the perspiration from his face and neck with his left, and, though apparently irritated by the heat, he shook hands cordially.

“It is hot here, hot as that hottest of all places, and I hear they are going to have that over here in Baconsville pretty soon; I hear so,” and the Doctor shook his fat sides with a chuckling laugh, adding: “You must have important business to call you out to-day.”

“It is quite important, quite,” replied General Baker. “I have got a suit on hand in Baconsville that is quite important, and if that other place you are talking about comes there, I hope I shall not find it hotter than this hollow is. Niggers may stand it, but I cannot.”

Both gentlemen were delighted and laughed loudly.

“I’ve just come from there,” said Dr. Wise.

“From where—Baconsville? or the other hot place?”

“Oh, from Baconsville,” replied the medical man, laughing. “I couldn’t have got away from the other place with all this fat.”

The laugh again subsiding, he continued: “You see I have a patient I am watching over there; and being in the neighborhood, was called in to see two or three of the better class of colored people. I’m afraid you’ll have trouble, there, at that suit. The niggers are saucy, and very angry about that collision between the Bakers and the militia.”

“Well, Doctor, the colored people in South Carolina have become so insolent and insurrectionary, and intractable, and have taken on so many intolerable airs, that they must be made to know their places. You will see their wenches on the streets of Augusta and Charleston, and all our cities, with their “pin-backs” and “button shoes,” and “bustles,” and indeed imitating our ladies in everything; and they even act as though they expected a white man to step aside and let them pass, as if they were the ladies themselves. I saw an affair in Charleston the other day that made my blood boil, and I involuntarily laid my hand upon my pistol, but fortunately I was preserved from using it.

“Three great black—creatures, I suppose I must call them men—were walking up the street, and met three young ladies whom I know to be members of one of our best families. What do you think but that these impudent brutes actually crowded our ladies into the gutter—made them actually step off the pavement for want of room to pass! Quite fortunately the ditch was dry, and not deep—four or five inches, at most. But such indignities are too great a tax on the forbearance of a gentleman of gallantry! Only one of the ladies actually stepped off, but then, time was when I could have blown out the brains of all three of the rascals, and the community and the State would have sustained me. But those were days of “home rule.” Alas! when shall we ever see them again!

“I do not know what they are meditating at Baconsville, but I hear they have been performing military evolutions, with arms in their hands, two or three times a week, recently, and at night too; and I am called over to put a stop to it. Why, we are not safe in our beds! It is one of the atrocities of our carpet-bag government that they are allowed arms at all, and now they have attacked our people.”

“Now, you don’t say so, General!” exclaimed the Doctor.

“To be sure! This case of mine would bear that construction; though Mr. Robert Baker has, in the absence of counsel, very mildly, and I fear unwisely, put it on the ground of ‘obstructing the highway.’ He might have made a case much stronger, for they obstructed the way with their guns and bayonets, and Gaston says some of them, at least, were seen to load their guns on the spot.”

“It is a case of positive violence, then, and insurrection?”

“Oh, positive insubordination,” said the General, with great emphasis and indignation. “And they have been making such threats that I’m called over to see if there is any redress possible—any law or means by which they can be restrained.”

“If anybody can straighten them out, you can, General; whether it is to be done by law or by force of arms. We haven’t forgotten your record in the Confederate service. But have you no help? You will need backing, I fear.”

“I have called upon several gentlemen along the way, and interested them and their clubs, I think; and the club at Enfield promise to come over to my assistance one hundred strong at least. But I have just been computing and could desire even a larger force, especially should the Judge decide adversely to us; for something must be done to insure our protection. I confess I feel some concern.”

“On reflection, I think you need not, General, for the community is fully aroused by a report that the negroes intend to mob those young men.”

“Mob them!” ejaculated General Baker, with an oath. “They will scarcely dare to do that. They know my military reputation too well to try that, and I shall be prepared for them, now that you have kindly forewarned me. But to be so Doctor, I must bid you good-day, and hasten forward, for a good seven miles lies before me yet.”

“I have great confidence in your ability to command success, and am sure the darkies have a wholesome respect for the same. So, wishing you all success, I also bid you good-day.”

The General now called more frequently upon the white people along the way, but soon found them anticipating his coming and ready to join him soon; forming quite an escort of cavalry as they proceeded.

It was two o’clock and intensely hot when they arrived at Sommer Hill, and found about one hundred and fifty men grouped in the shade of two wide-spreading oak trees near a church there, and around a grog shop opposite.

The General’s arrival was greeted with three cheers, three times repeated, and three “tigers;” and the men, anxious to do him honor, pressed around his carriage to shake his hand and assure him that they still cherished the recollections of his gallantry on behalf of the “lost cause.”

Though quite animated, this scene was brief, for courteously declining the scores of invitations to “drink,” General Baker informed his followers that the call to duty was still more imperative to his mind than those to eat or drink, and he must hasten forward to consult with his clients before the hour for court arrived.

Directing them to remain there till signaled, and to keep an outlook from the brow of the hill overlooking Baconsville, two miles away, he bravely rode thitherward entirely unattended, notwithstanding the earnest protestations of his numerous friends.

“So brave a man who can decline such entreaties to drink, and as gracefully as the General did, ought to be at the head of a temperance society,” said a young man, lounging near the church.

“That’s so, Jimminy!” replied a comrade. “Wonder if he isn’t.”

“I’m afraid not. I suppose he takes his wine, and probably something stronger sometimes; though he wants a cool head now. I wish those fellows over there wouldn’t drink so. I’m for breaking up the nigger militia; but we want cool heads for it. We can scare the niggers out of it if we work it right, and all keep sober.”

“That’s what I think, but you see already how it will be. I would go home and give it up, but they’ll say I was afraid. I don’t want to get into no collisions with the United States, for my part; and if a lot of them get drunk, I’m afraid something will be done that will lead to that.”

Less than half a mile from where this conversation was passing, Harry Gaston sat in his shady porch.

“Don’t set there doing nothing but watching,” said a tall lean young woman who sat just inside of the door, busying herself by rocking in an easy chair. “The General will think yo’ reckon on ’im awfully, an’ he’s conceited enough now, mercy knows! There, take them old papers of yo’re uncle’s, and make as if yo’ was studying politics on yo’ own hook;” and she tossed a handful of newspapers upon the floor beside him.

He took up a copy of that celebrated democratic organ of the South, the Charleston News and Courier, dated May, 1875, and read—

“Governor Chamberlain richly deserves the confidence of the people of this State. The people of South Carolina, who have all at stake, who see and hear what persons outside the State cannot know, are satisfied with his honesty. They believe in him as well they may.”

“Bah! the contemptible carpet-bagger!” said Gaston, dashing the paper on the floor; and picking up another, dated February, 1876, he read again—

“We believe that, without regard to consequences or to his party, he (the Governor) will go on in the narrow path of right.”

Another—“January, 1876. In South Carolina the conspicuous leader in the fight for reform, the one man who has made reform possible at an early day, is Governor Chamberlain, whose election was the greatest blessing in disguise that this people has ever known.”

“The greatest curse!” exclaimed Gaston kicking the paper off the porch.

“That the Courier?” drawled Mrs. Gaston. “I thought that used to be the best paper in the South—true to the Confederacy all through the war. Has it gone over to the Radicals?”

“It don’t pretend so, but it has been bribed, I reckon.”

A voice from the highway, now called the husband away to hold a brief colloquy with General Baker.

“My horse is very tired and warm, and I myself am in need of refreshment; so, Mr. Gaston, I shall be obliged if you will strike across the fields and notify your father-in-law of my arrival, and bring him and your brother-in-law, Tom, to the store of Mr. Dunn to meet me for conference about the suit we have in hand,” and the great man drove on.

“Mary, General Baker wants me to go across the fields to your father’s for him,” said the young man, with a demure countenance, on re-entering the house.

“Well, I reckon yo’ won’t do no such a thing!” she replied, forcibly. “A mighty easy thing it would be for some nigger to pop you over, and nobody to see. Yo’ won’t go that way.”

“I’ll just gallop down the other road and get to the village ahead o’ the General; Tom’s thar’, we can go together after the old man; though I a’n’t afraid of the niggers.”

“See! see! Meester Dunn,” said that worthy’s helpful “frau,” as they sat at their dinner in a room immediately in the rear of their grocery. “Dar is Shinneral Paker from Enefield, an’ er pe shtopping right here! Pe quick, now. My laws! but dis vill pe ine goot ebening by de bar! De Shenneral shtop ’ere, an’ all de gem’mans and companies come, too! Hurry, now Shorge!”

“Dat alle right now. I fix ’m mit ole Bob gester-tag,” said the shrewd though moderate husband, George, arising from the table, and shuffling through the glass door by which the dining-room and grocery (or more accurately groggery), communicated, he greeted the great military dignity with a volume of broken English that was almost incomprehensible.

Shaking the dust from his apparel, the distinguished guest ordered food and drink for his beast, after time given him to cool; adding that he would refresh himself while waiting for the appearance of his clients.

“Alle right! alle right! De ole voman vill serve you,” replied Dunn, as he followed his colored servant and the weary horse to the stables.

Gaston and Tommy were by this time crossing the great truck-farm of Robert Baker, every rood of which was purchased with the earnings of trained blood-hounds, chasing fugitives from justice or labor, and mainly the latter.

In a sag of land, between the hills on the right and the river on the left, was a brickyard, in the office of which Mr. Robert Baker and his son Hanson were found.

The four men were soon en route for Baconsville. A colored boy, bound apprentice to the older Baker, skulked along the crooked fence by the wayside.

“Joe,” said the old man, stopping the horse, “Joe, come here.” The personal appearance and reputation of the old man, and recollections of a recent chastisement for drumming for the militia company, made little Joe’s dark skin quiver as he timidly approached the vehicle.

“Get in,” said the same gruff voice, as room was made for the child at Baker’s feet, where he gathered himself into the smallest possible ball, from which two great, soft, timid eyes looked from one face to another, and from the two glittering guns of the young men who rode on either side, and the pistol-shaped lumps on the left breasts of their thin coats, to the breasts of the two men fronting him in the carriage, where he could see two more bright and shining “nine-shooters” peeping out.

The wind presently raised a paper from a basket standing beside him, and disclosed two great horse-pistols lying on a clean white napkin.

“I wonder is dey gwoine to shoot Doc and Watta wid dem ’ar’, as Ned Dunn said dey is?” thought the child. “Dat looks like dar’s a mighty nice lunch undah ’em, anyhow?”

Hanson Baker jerked the lap-robe from his knees, and covered the basket from view.

They soon reached Dunn’s store, and alighted, and removing the basket, bade Joe return with the horse and carriage, and remember to stay there closely.

As they sat in close conversation in the back part of that groggery, while the General partook of the “nice lunch” the basket did contain, it was plain that “Old Bob Baker, the slave catcher,” and the aristocratic General had little in common except their patronymic and their political opinions and ideas.

CHAPTER VI.
THE CLOUD THICKENS.

“Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Fear him not, Cæsar, he’s not dangerous;
He is a noble Roman and well given.”

—Julius Cæsar.

The State of South Carolina was settled by political refugees and desperadoes of every description and from every nation, with no unity of ideas or interests; and African slavery was introduced but two years after the first settlement had secured a permanent footing. Hence, arrogance and oppression, rapacity and murder, early became the rule and occupation of the people.

The existence and perpetuation of slavery during more than eight generations caused and necessitated an arrest of progress in civilization, and the war which resulted in the emancipation of the slaves and the re-establishment of the Union, found the whites in several of the Southern States, in many respects not far in advance of the people of England in the sixteenth century; and as those feudalistic and inharmonious families—the descendants of the earliest settlers—are still recognized as “the first families,” the “aristocracy of the State”—in the year of our Lord 1876, and of the Republic one hundred—boasting and bravado were accomplishments ostentatiously displayed there, and often sustained by such brutal assault and lawless violence and outrage, as those of the worst days of feudalism.

This state of society alone explains the temerity of the threats and preparations for violence, and their fearful consummation, which blacken the history of the Republic’s centennial year.

While Robert Baker and his sons were in Dunn’s groggery, informing their counsel respecting the particulars of the suit he was about to conduct for them, many exciting scenes were transpiring in the vicinity, and the streets of the doomed village were becoming lively with the presence of armed men, who were freely imbibing whisky, and threatening to “kill every —— nigger in Baconsville that day.” Especially loud and frequent were the threats against the Captain and Second Lieutenant of the militia company.

As soon as half-past three o’clock, quite a crowd had gathered around George Dunn’s store, and the bar was evidently reaping the rich harvest Mrs. D. had anticipated; while with loud and excessively revolting profanity, the case shortly to be tried was canvassed, and rumors of a “negro insurrection” rehearsed.

“Who is that coming?” asked one, as a quiet man of medium size approached.

“Oh, that is Judge Kanrasp of the county seat, he is a cursed Northern Republican,” was the reply, accompanied by a shocking oath.

The wrathful eyes of the entire crowd were fixed upon him as he came up, and, entering the store, approached the place where the two Bakers sat, and addressing the General said, “Mr. Gaston informed me that you wished to see me.”

This was not his first interview with Mr. Robert Baker in connection with this difficulty. The latter had stopped him that morning upon the streets of the city opposite, to speak of the pending trial.

The Judge had then stated his opinion that Gaston’s testimony had thus far developed no legal case against the colored men, and urged the abandonment of the case, as to push it further, would merely excite ill-feeling between the two races at a time when it was most undesirable—at the commencement of a political campaign—and even should the plaintiffs secure a judgment, it was a matter which could be appealed, and in a higher court their case could not stand a moment.

“I shall do no such thing,” replied Mr. Baker. “The negroes of Baconsville have been very offensive; they have interfered with my sons, and I am determined that they shall be punished. The case shall be prosecuted, and so far as any feeling is concerned, I don’t care for that. Some of my friends and neighbors from the country have been informed that the trial will take place this evening, and they will be present, not less than twenty-five or thirty of them.”

“Mr. Baker, perhaps there will be two or three hundred,” said Kanrasp.

“Well, yes (with an oath), two or three thousand!” and the two men separated, and the Judge at once crossed the river to Baconsville, and confidentially communicated all to a discreet colored man there, in whose cool, quiet determination he had great confidence; commissioning him to see the officers of the militia company, and instruct them to present themselves at the Court, submit to judgment whatever it might be, and then, by an appeal to a higher court, find an easy way out of the difficulty; as the “precept” or informal paper which had been served upon them, must cause the judgment to fail there; and stating that in case of an attempted defense before Justice Rives, he apprehended serious trouble from the throng that would undoubtedly be present.

Other important business detained both Kanrasp and his influential friend Springer till the middle of the afternoon, when, on re-entering the street, they saw the village thickly besprinkled with squads of men from the rifle clubs of the vicinity. These clubs or military companies existed in open defiance of law and the Governor’s prohibitive proclamation.

“This looks like trouble,” said Judge Kanrasp to his friend. “Strange way to attend a simple trial! Now go right up and see those officers immediately, and urge them to be on hand at court, and stand judgment.” So saying he went to Marmor’s office upon other business, where Gaston soon rode up, bringing Gen. Baker’s request for the interview, to which we find him responding.

“I am here to represent my cousin, Mr. Robert Baker, in this matter,” said the General, “and wish you, Mr. Kanrasp, to sit down and tell me what it is.”

Judge K. complied, adding the advice he had given his clients.

“We have been annoyed a great deal by the negroes about here, and I am determined to get satisfaction, and Gen. Baker has been brought here as my attorney, to see that satisfaction is given us,” said Robert Baker, in a loud and vehement tone.

“Now, Judge Kanrasp,” said the General, “will you not go and see those officers of this company and request them to call upon me? I desire to tell them what I think is necessary for them to do to prevent the possibility of difficulty in the future. A great deal of feeling has been growing between Mr. Robert Baker’s family and immediate neighbors, and these colored people in Baconsville.”

“What proposition do you make them?”

“Well, I think it will be necessary for them to apologize to my cousin and surrender their arms.”

As he did not say to whom their arms should be surrendered, the Judge replied——

“Well, General, you know I am, like yourself, merely an incident in Baconsville; and whilst I have, of course, a certain amount of influence with the colored people, on account of my political affiliations with them, I cannot undertake to say that they will respond to your request. I will do what I can to induce them to do so. But suppose these negotiations and propositions fail, is it likely that that there will be a collision?”

“I think there will.”

“Well, as I am one of a very few white ‘radicals’ here, if a collision takes place I suppose I shall stand a pretty poor chance.”

“I have no doubt that you will.”

Shortly after Judge K. left Mr. Marmor’s office (which adjoined his dwelling), Capt. Doc, Lieut. Watta, Mr. Springer and Rev. Mr. Jackson (the Legislative member who had delivered the oration on the 4th), entered. Mr. Jackson was much excited, and walked up and down the room, interlarding questions and ejaculations and prayers quite promiscuously; unheeding the kindly solicitude of a bright little boy of five years, with shining auburn ringlets, and great, soft, spiritual eyes, which looked eagerly towards “the Elder’s” face as he went tugging a large Bible back and forth behind him.

“Ha! Jackson, hear that boy now,” said Doc. “The child is the best Christian of the two, come to the pinch.”

“What? What was you saying Doc?” asked the Reverend Honorable.

“Why, just see what that boy has got, and hear what he’s saying. He don’t scare worth a cent. Do you Bub? You’ll make a soldier some day, won’t you?”

“No sir, I reckon I won’t, cause soldiers kill. ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ That’s the sixth commandment.”

“What about the book, sonny,” asked Elder Jackson.

“My Sunday school teacher says when I’m afraid, I must ask God what to do; and this is His letter, He wrote it. It’s big,” tugging to raise it to the level of the man’s hand.

The Elder took the Bible, sat down, drew the child to his side, opened it at random, and read, Isaiah xviii: 7: “In that time shall the present be brought unto the Lord of hosts of a people scattered and peeled, and from a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, the Mount Zion.”

He closed the book muttering, “Yes, the freshet came clear up to the church, clear up to the church.”

“The whole matter is that the Bakers are determined to break up this drilling,” said Marmor. “You’re too good a drill master, Doc. The old man himself told me that it was wrong, and that the niggers shouldn’t have no militia company, and that it was wrong for you to drill by moonlight. I told him that the white militia over here in Georgia drilled on the streets every night. ‘Well, it’s wrong for the niggers to drill at all,’ says he.”

“Well, now, it does ’pear to me like the white folks is determined to put the devil into the colored people’s heads anyhow. Now, we’re honest in this matter, and only want to have a nice militia company like the white folks does, and like free citizens has got a right to, and to protect the State when it needs it and the Governor calls for us; but they just goes to work, and by talking about what they pretend the colored people is a going, or intending to do, they just makes the colored people mad, and puts these bad ideas into their heads, and by-and-by the colored people, maybe will get courage enough to undertake to do as they is really instructing us to do. And then there’s more’n that in it too. Mor’n two months ago Hanson Baker tole me and John Peters, Press Wells, and John Bade, and if I mistake not, Lem Panesly, that the Democrats had made it up in their own minds, and they had gone over the State, and also had about thirty men from Texas and Mississippi to come into this State, and they were feeding them, and organizing all the white men into certain different clubs; and before election that there had to be a certain number of negroes killed—leading men; and if after that they found out they couldn’t carry the State that way, they was gwoine to kill enough so that they could carry the majority. He said it is a fact that that has to be done, and he said in the presence of these men, that it had to start right here in Baconsville. He said Baconsville is the leading place in the county (for the niggers, you know), and if they could be successful in killing them that they wanted to in Baconsville, they could carry the county; but the same has to be done in all the counties, that there was no way to prevent it. I told him we had some laws, and a Governor and a President. He says he didn’t belong to none o’ the clubs, and hadn’t nothing to do with it, but it would be done, shor. I says, ‘Suppose the colored men have a poll to themselves, and the white men to themselves,’ and he said, ‘It don’t make a bit o’ difference what sort o’ polls they have; it is the voting we want to stop; and these voting niggers has got to be killed. The white men has declared that the State has got to be ruled by white men again, and we have got to have just such a government as we had before the war; and when we git it, all the poor men and the niggers has got to be disfranchised, and the rich men will rule! And he tole me then that our town marshal, John Carr and Dan will certainly be killed. I asked why? and he said there was plenty of men that had plenty against them, and they would kill them shor. Says I, ‘Mr. Baker will I be in that number?’ he says, ‘No, I don’t know whether yo’r name is down or no, but it depends on how yo’ behave yo’self.’ He’d been drinking some, or he wouldn’t ha’ been so free to tell. Well, then I received a note the other day—a letter with my name, and specifying a dozen or more in this neighborhood that have to be killed; and I was shor to be killed. Now, this is the beginning of it shor. They want to disband this company so that the Governor won’t have nothing to call on to put them down, and we can’t get no protection till the United States can send soldiers from somewhere, after we can get word to the Governor, and he can git it to Grant. They must think we’re just cowards and fools if we’ll let ’em break us up, though I’ll agree that the men ha’n’t got much fight in ’em, but I have, and I wish they had,” and Captain Doc tossed a newspaper to the extreme end of the room.

“Scattered and peeled!” “Scattered and peeled!” said the Elder, as he resumed his striding about the apartment.

While these excited men thus conversed, there were borne from the street to their ears the sound of blood-curdling oaths, and shouts of “We’ll carry the State about the time we’ve killed four or five hundred of these niggers and their carpet-bag cronies.” We’ve got to have South Carolina.” “The white men have got to rule.” “This shall be a white man’s government again.”

“Just hear that chap singing,” said Marmor with a ghastly smile:

“We’re going to redeem South Carolina to-day. This is the beginning of the redemption of my Caroline.” The poor, maudlin fellow sat upon his horse near the corner of the street hard by, and improvised a lengthy political madrigal evidently to his own exquisite delight.

“I reckon you’ve got the right of it Doc,” said Marmor; “the political side of this fuss swallows up all the rest. The fuss on the Fourth, was only got up for making a spot to strike at.”

“Well,” said Doe, both goes together; for all the politics they know is to put the niggers down, and themselves up atop; and they are trying to fool the ignorant ones into believing that the constitutions has all run out, so they won’t try to take the law on ’em.”

“They’d better look out, or they may feel the law themselves. If Chamberlain can’t enforce it, there is a United States, they’ll find!”

“I reckon so! I reckon so!” chimed in all present.

“Capt. Doc,” said Elder Jackson, “you must remember that it is not your own life and your company’s lives that is in danger, but that of every colored individual in town; and the happiness and prosperity of all will be at their mercy if a fight takes place; and so I beg you to come to terms with Baker. Bend and apologize a little for the sake of them that had nothing to do with the Fourth of July difficulty.”

“What can I do? Just tell me. I haven’t failed to think of that, I tell you. That part of it is the biggest trouble to me now.”

“It is Watta that has offended them the most,” said Springer; “for he got so mad last Thursday. He’s got too much white blood in him to stand their abuse, and he was nigh about as abusive as Hanson Baker himself, that day.

It was all true enough what he said, but that didn’t make it no better for them to take.”

“Now, Brother Watta, just you go, as you know you ought to, and acknowledge you ought to have kept your temper, and that’ll make the whole thing right, and Doc’ll apologize too,” said the apparently confiding Elder.

“Do you think so? Well, suppose you come along with us,” said Watta, a slight veil of credulity scarcely concealing a sarcasm that bordered upon contempt for the self-loving simplicity of the Elder. “I’d rather get on my knees to them,” he added more seriously, “bad as I hate them, than have my wife and children as scared as they are to-day. But I doubt the success of even that, unless I would give them my gun, and promise to lie there, and let them kick me when they chose, or shoot me if they like, and I’m afraid my temper would rise then, if I didn’t.”

In defiance of fears, the men all laughed at the ludicrous picture of this tall, genteel-appearing, light yellow gentleman, brimful of the same “spirit” that fired some of the noblest heroes the South ever boasted of, and in whose veins coursed much of the same ancestral blood, cringing in such a pusillanimous fashion.

“It is no time for fun,” said Springer. “Will you go with me, Adam Watta, and see General Baker?”

“If you say you think it’ll do any good, I will go.”

“You can but perish if you go,” said Elder Jackson, who was, like many another, very courageous for his neighbors, and quite willing to bid them Godspeed in any efforts for the safety of the town, including Elder J. and his possessions.

But the men paused in the doorway. “Ask a man to run the gauntlet of all those armed and half-drunken enemies? I tell you I can’t do it; I’m not prepared to die, and I sha’n’t go. I could fight, but to go right into a crowd to be murdered, I’m not ready,” and Watta turned back. Looking out upon the constantly increasing mob, Springer did not urge him.

“I’m going to Prince Rives’s house,” said Doc, and strode out of the office and down the street.

The cry of an infant was heard in an adjoining room, followed by the sound of a rocking cradle, and the voice of the little boy singing in chanting style, “You must not cry, little sister; for the wicked men is all agoing around to kill all the little children, ‘from two years old and under,’ and they will shoot your papa, and make your mamma cry. So take this rattle and be still.”

“Louie,” called Marmor, from the office. “Don’t say such things. Nobody’ll hurt you, nor the baby. Where is your mamma?”

“She is here crying—sitting right here crying.”

“The man arose quickly, and entered the room. “Why, Jane,” said he, “what are you crying about? It will be all settled, and there’ll be no fuss.”

“Don’t you wish you could make me believe that, when you know you don’t believe it yourself? I do wish you would go away over to the city, and take the train somewhere. I know they will be after you. You know they want you killed, because you are a radical leader; and now will be their time.”

“Do you suppose I would go and leave you and the children?”

“You know you couldn’t defend us, and we don’t need it. We’re a great deal safer without you than with you. I should fret all the time for fear that you had fallen into their hands, to be sure; but I know there is no chance for you to escape death if you stay here.”

Marmor returned to his office, and found that his friends had all left. He saw them approaching Rives’s house. There they found Captain Doc and the Trial Justice in earnest conversation.

“I can’t appear before your court, Judge Rives—not to-day,” said the captain; “for I feel that your court is unable to protect my life, and I believe my life is unsafe. I am willing that yo’ should go to work and draw up a bond, that yo’ think proper, and I am willing to give bonds to a higher court, where I think my life will be safe. The reason I come to yo’ to tell yo’, is because I don’t want yo’ to suppose that I treat yo’r court with no disrespect by not coming; but it is because I don’t think my life is safe.”

The Justice reflected.

“Well, you must use your own judgment,” said he. “Of course, if your life is unsafe, and if these men intend to take your life, of course, I can’t protect you. I haven’t protection enough to protect you; my constables can’t do much!”

“That is my belief,” replied Doc, “and for that reason I don’t want to go befo’ yo’r court without yo’ force me to; and then if I am killed, yo’ will be responsible.”

“You can use your own judgment, Captain. I shall go to court at the proper time. Your name, of course, will be called, and if you don’t answer to your name—well, you won’t be there to answer. It’s a pity but this thing couldn’t be settled without going to court. I’m afraid once at the court room it will be impossible to get along without trouble.”

“Well, I want it settled,” said Doc. “And I,” “And I,” said the two Lieutenants.

“Well, then, suppose I go for you, and ask what will give satisfaction,” said Springer.

“All right,” was the ready response from all.

Mr. Springer met Judge Kanrasp coming down the street, from his interview with the General, and each communicated the message he bore, and thought the best thing for the safety of the town, was to get the parties together with the crowd excluded.

“Who is to take the guns?” asked Mr. Springer.

“I don’t know. The Governor, I suppose. If not, that may alter the case.”

“If Gen. Baker will guarantee the safety of the men, I believe they will be safe, but he should guarantee the safety of the town also.”

“So say I,” replied Judge Kanrasp, and each passed on his errand.

Judge K. reported to the officers only Gen. Baker’s request for an interview, and withheld his proposition for a settlement.

Soon Mr. Springer returned with the same request from the General. They all approached the door, and Doc went out upon the street, but re-entered immediately.

“There is no one more readier than I am to settle, but I see a great crowd down there at Dunn’s store, all armed, and drunk, or playing off drunk. Springer, yo’ tell Gen. Baker that I would meet him, but that I would like for him to come away from where them men are, and that I am willing to meet him at yo’r house, if that is agreeable.”

The aspect of things became more gloomy very soon. A company of twenty-five or thirty thoroughly-armed and mounted men had entered the village some time before, since which squads had been seen coming in from all directions.

Several leading citizens had joined the group at Rives’s house, and all united in urging the officers to comply with Gen. Baker’s request; but they were more and more reluctant to go, fearing it was only a ruse to decoy them there, secure, disarm, and then murder them.

The suspicion was but natural, as similar transactions had been far from rare since reconstruction. At length, after it had been reported that Gen. Baker had sworn to lay the town in ashes if they did not comply with his demands, all the members of the company again consented to go, but on approaching the door, fell back again.

“You must go to save the town,” said Springer; “but don’t take your guns.”

“We won’t go without them,” said all the men.

“But he’ll make a demand for their surrender. Better leave them behind.”

“Yes, that is just it,” said Watta. “You men have been keeping that back. Why should we go to General Baker? Why doesn’t he come to us if he wants to see us? There are no drunken rowdies here for him to fear. Two men drove into our ranks, an organized a legally chartered company of the State militia, with loyal guns in our loyal hands, and a flag which brought us freedom from these old masters—the right to stand up like men, and not fear their nigger-catching blood-hounds; and we have sworn to be true to that flag—to the United States, and to the State, and ourselves, and to take care of these guns that belong to the State, and to yield them up only to lawful authority. These two nigger-catchers whose occupation is gone, drove into our ranks; and we, like a set of cowards, opened ranks and let them go through; and now they bring this ex-confederate General, who got the only title he has and of which he and they are so proud, in fighting the United States; they bring this General Baker here, and he asks us to go down to old Baker’s feet and apologize—for what? I don’t know; and to give up our guns that we have sworn to protect from all enemies of the Union, and all unauthorized persons—to give them to this ex-confederate General, who boasts to-day, and is applauded by these, his old confederate soldiers around him to-day, for what he did against the Government. He, surrounded by those who love and revere him for what he did to destroy the Union and keep us and our parents and children in slavery—he demands our guns and ourselves! Pretty National Guards!! Which are we, men, cowards or traitors?”

“Don’t take your guns, and may be possible you can get along without giving the guns up. I surely don’t want you to be traitors,” said the Elder; “but I trust an apology will do.”

“And I trust no such thing,” said Doc. “And where shall we be after this, living or dead? It won’t make much difference. They want to break us up! that’s it—and enslave us!”

“Where shall we be? On our knees forever at their feet,” replied Watta; “that is, if a single man of us ever got away alive, which I’ll warrant we never should if we refused to give up our guns.”

“But remember, there’ll be bloodshed if you don’t go,” said Elder Jackson. “Better humble yourselves than be killed.”

“And remember, too, the women and children, and the property,” added Springer.

“You men is mighty thoughtful; suppose yo’ ’go yo’selves. ’Twouldn’t be no blood shed if they got killed, I reckon yo’ think,” said a man from the ranks.

They had retired to an upper room, and Kanrasp approached a window looking towards Dunn’s store. Doc followed, and then Watta, and then others.

Still more armed men were seen coming into the town, and the mob around the General’s headquarters was more dense and disorderly.

“You all know that it would be only my dead body that would ever leave that place, if I went there,” said Watta. “I should be riddled with bullets in no time. Those men standing outside of that groggery are thirsting for my blood this minute.”

“But I ‘am only a Nigger,’ (baring his yellow arm to his elbow.)”—Page [105].

“I have known Gen. Baker for several years, and I believe he is an honorable man, and he will protect you,” said Judge K——.

“An honorable man?” repeated Watta. “‘An honorable man’ he may be when dealing with those he acknowledges his equals, if there are any such; but I am ‘only a nigger’ (baring his yellow arm to his elbow.) “Honor? He’ll ventilate no honor when a nigger or politics is concerned. I don’t mean any disrespect to you, Judge; but Gen. Baker doesn’t hold the same views about colored people that you do, as you know.”

“Well, I’m going,” said the First Lieutenant, “and I talked as bad as any of you on the Fourth. I’ll apologize.”

“But they hate me more than all the rest of you,” resumed Watta, still inspecting his bare arm. “I’m nearer their color, and the best thing they can say of a man of my complexion is that he’s a smart fellow, but needs watching. And they do watch us, and they magnify everything we do or say, and misconstrue it, and lie about us. And then you know I’m that heinous offender—a ‘nigger school teacher, and a Republican newspaper correspondent.’ Why, Gen. Baker can’t protect me. I should be shot a dozen times before he knew I was coming. And then he’d regret it. That wouldn’t do me much good, nor my family. I tell you it is only a trap, a decoy, to get us up there and massacre us. If they kill me, they must come after me, I a’n’t fool enough to go to them to get shot.”

“If the General could get shet of them armed men, would you go?” asked Springer.

“Yes, certainly.”

“Then, I’ll try if he will go to my house,” and he slipped cautiously out of the dwelling, for the whites thought the officers were in the Armory, and he did not wish to undeceive them.

He was successful on his mission, and soon returned; but the officers had seen the shouting throng surround and follow their General, and as the streets were rife with warlike menaces, all now utterly refused to go to a house so near Dunn’s store and the main crowd.

“See! see!” they exclaimed. “They are coming down the street to meet us! Gen. Baker can’t protect us!” All of which Springer could not dispute, so he sadly returned to Gen. Baker, who, on his approaching, called out:

“I suppose you couldn’t get those fellows to meet me?”

“No, General, they are too afraid of these armed bodies of men you have around you. That is the only reason.”

“Armed men? armed men? I don’t see any armed men!” and that military dignitary rolled his eyes about as if in pantomime. “Well Sam, there’s no use parleying any longer. Now, by —— I want those guns, and I’ll be —— if I don’t have them!”

A movement of expectancy swayed the throng as these words were heard and passed from lip to lip, and then a shout rent the air.

Mr. Springer wended his way back through the crowd of men on horseback, and men on foot, whose fingers fidgeted upon the triggers of their firearms, and he sought the house of Justice Rives with a heavier heart than he had ever borne before; while General Baker entered his carriage again, as the hour for court drew near.

CHAPTER VII.
PORTENTIOUS DARKNESS.

“Ye gods, it doth amaze me!

A man of such feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world.”

—Casca.

A small, dark man, with a lithe form and sparkling eyes, had been busy preparing Justice Rives’s office for the expected court, as he had been previously directed, and was unaware of the excitement prevailing in other parts of the village. His task completed, he seated himself in an armchair, adjusted his feet high upon the post of the open door, and with his coat off and fan in hand, sat leisurely reading.

About half past three o’clock he was startled by an imperative voice, asking, “Where is Rives?”

On looking up from his newspaper, he saw Robert Baker and his legal counsel seated in the latter’s carriage, which stood before the door.

“Mr. Rives is at his house, I reckon; but he’ll be here directly,” was the reply.

“Go and tell him to come here to me,” commanded the General.

“I’m not Mr. Rives’s office-boy. I am a constable, and am here attending to my business. He told me he would be here by four o’clock, and he won’t come any quicker by my going after him.”

General B.—“Do you know who you are talking to?”

Constable Newton.—“I’m talking to General Baker, I believe.”

Gen. B.—“Well, you scamp! bring me some paper here.”

Newton.—“Here is the office, and here is the chairs, and here is the paper, and pen and ink, sir; and here is the chairs for all the attorneys that wants to do business here to come in and sit down.”

Gen. B. (with an oath).—“Bring it to me, sir!”

Newton.—“I won’t do it. Come in, sir, and sit at the table.”

The irate General sprang from his carriage, and, followed by the ever-ready Gaston, rushed into the court room in a menacing manner. But the imperturbable constable did not move, nor show signs of disturbance.

Gen. B. (with a vile epithet and oaths, which the reader should imagine, thickly strewn throughout this colloquy).—“Give me that chair!”

Newton.—“There is a chair.”

General B. thundered.—“Give me that chair you are sitting on! Get out of that chair, and give it to me! I want this chair and intend to have it!”

“All right,” replied Newton, after a pause; “if this chair suits you better than the others, take it.”

Gen. B.—“You —— leatherhead radical! You sitting down there fanning yourself!”

Newton.—“I am fanning myself, sitting in my own office, and attending to my own business.”

Gen. B.—“You vile brute, you! You want to have a bullet-hole put through you before you can move!”

At this juncture old man Baker and one of his followers, pistols in hand, reinforced the General, and Tommy rode as close to the door as possible, with his trusty carbine, while others appeared outside.

Newton arose, and taking his chair by the back, turned the seat of it toward General Baker, and, still holding the back with both hands, said:

“There it is, Gen. Baker, if you want it; and you can shoot me, if you want to. Mr. Robert Baker, you know what sort of a man I am. I have always tried to behave myself when you came in the office.”

Robert B.—“Yes, but” (with an oath) “this drilling has got to stop. I want you to go for Rives.”

Newton.—“I’ve got no right to go for Rives, and I’m not going.”

Robert B.—“Well you’ll be a dead man, and you’ll wish you had gone.”

Newton.—“I am but one man.”

Gen. B. (with oaths and sneers of contempt).—“Sitting down there with your feet cocked up!”

Newton.—“Well, General, I’m not dead; but if you’re going to kill me, why kill me; and that is all you can do.”

Gen. B.—“We’ll take our time about that. We’ll show you, you insolent darkie!—you contemptible nigger!”

The Bakers returned to their carriages in high dudgeon.

“There is Justice Rives’ private secretary,” said the old man, as they were about leaving the premises. “If you will speak to him, I think he will go for Rives.”

“No,” replied the incensed General, “I am not going to be insulted again. You can do so if you choose.”

Robert Baker did choose, for he preferred to reserve resentment, rather than allow it to thwart or hinder his purposes. Gaston, however, ‘halted’ the secretary, and undertook the mission himself.

Can the reader imagine the scene in that upper room in Rives’ house, when a female servant announced that Gaston was at the door below, urging the presence of Judge Rives at the court-room, as Gen. Baker and his clients were waiting there; though the hour had not yet arrived?

Noiselessly the entire group descended to the ground floor, and, screened from view, listened breathlessly to the collocution which, however, was brief and courteous, as the young man naturally wished to conciliate the favor of the Judge. He was dismissed with the assurance that the court should be opened promptly.

Prince Rives (the Judge’s baptismal name was Prince—it might seem sacrilege to designate a name given in slavery as “Christian”) stepped quietly into his sitting-room—a perfect bower of flowers, ferns growing under glass, and singing-birds, where his wife and eldest daughter were anxiously watching the crowd gathering in the streets.

“I’m going down to the office now,” said he, “and if any trouble should occur, stay right here in the house, and keep the children in, and you will all be safe.”

Alas! these were assurances false even to the heart of him who made them.

Has the reader ever laid a kiss upon a loved one’s brow, and then watched the dear form passing beyond recall, perhaps, (oh, that terrible perhaps!) if returning at all, to come a lifeless thing—an uninhabited tenement—or in agony and blood; while the ever active imagination chafed and chid the hands and feet that fain would do its bidding and follow that loved form, though duty fettered them to inactivity?

Or has he gone out under the benediction of love, to meet a hate that might hold him in its deadly grasp, forbidding his return?

To such we need not describe the adieus exchanged in that little sitting-room; for the sweet influences of love take no cognizance of complexion.

Trial Justice Prince Rives soon issued from the front door of his house, book in hand, erect and commanding, looking the true ideal African General as he was, and walked leisurely up the street, unattended, and apparently unarmed; as if to show the mob that at least one negro was not afraid.

Tall, straight, powerful, his black and shining visage perfectly calm, he strode through the throng of armed and angry men that surrounded the door of his office, and crowded the court-room.

Kanrasp and Springer followed at some distance to witness should any disturbance arise; and while attention was thus attracted towards the court-room, the officers all made their way to the armory, whither many other members of the Company and other citizens had already hastened for safety behind its strong walls, doors and window-shutters. Women and children fled across the long bridge to the city, or to the surrounding country; though many remained to guard their small possessions, and share the fate of husbands and fathers, should the worst come.

Armed men were still coming in, and yet more rapidly, and the sinking sun heralded a brief, southern twilight and a moonless night; while a great terror took possession of the inhabitants of the doomed village.

A few straggling members of the Company appearing with their guns, which they had formerly taken to their homes for cleaning, became the unfortunate subjects of a hue and cry as they hurried along towards the rendezvous, and were marked for the night’s barbarities.

No small exhibition of nerve was now required of that African Major-General of the obnoxious “National Guards,”—one of the very men whose high military position was so offensive to the white men now surrounding him, and thronging his court-room, that, though notably fond of the practice of arms, they utterly disregarded the law requiring their enrollment as State Militia-men, lest they might be subordinated to him.

Yet with measured step and dignified mien he passed the carriage where the Bakers still sat, greeting them with easy politeness.

“I should like to know whether you are sitting in the capacity of Major-General of State Militia, or as a Trial Justice?” said Gen. Baker, when all was in readiness.

“That will depend upon the nature of the testimony. I am sitting as a peace officer; and if the facts are such as to justify my sitting as a Trial Justice, I will do so; if not, it will be otherwise.”

“It is immaterial to me; I merely wanted to know. I want to investigate the facts of this matter, and either capacity will be agreeable to me,” replied the General.

At this juncture the Intendant (Mayor), approached, and whispered to the General, “I think if you would suspend this trial for awhile, we could settle it.”

“Just ask the Judge. If he suspends I am willing.”

A brief conference ensued, after which the Judge announced a suspension for ten minutes.

This caused dissatisfaction among the spectators, as a peaceful adjustment would be but a tame issue of all their military preparations.

Intendant Garndon then conducted the plaintiffs and their attorney to the council chamber, which was separated from Dunn’s shop on the corner or Main Street by only one half the width of a narrow street.

At this time the largest and most unruly part of the cavalry was gathered about this corner groggery, and a less suitable place for the conference could not have been selected; but each would-be peacemaker seemed to think peace most attainable on his own premises.

Though the distance was less than four squares, as they could proceed but slowly through the throng, it sufficed Gen. Baker to administer a lecture to the dusky official upon his personal culpability in having allowed “this so-called militia company,” to train “upon Mr. Robert Baker’s road,” and with arms in their hands—though, doubtless the poor, berated mayor found difficulty in understanding how a public highway could be “Mr. Robert Baker’s road,” or how he could have disarmed the State’s militia.

As has already been stated, quite a number of colored citizens, and of the rank and file of the militia men, had gathered in and about the armory, hoping to find protection there.

Among them was Dan Pipsie, who was quite sober, and his own plucky self.

“Well, if I war Captain Doc, I’d do anyt’ing on earth to settle dis myself,” said Dan. “I wouldn’t have de blood of all dese collo’d families on my head. When I die, I don’t want no man’s wife cussin’ me, noh blamin’ me fo’ his death.”

“Capt. Doc a’n’t a bit to blame now,” replied Mann Harris. “I was ’bout two hundred yards from ’em at the time of the fuss. I saw Gaston and Tom Baker drive down, and get out and go into Nunberger’s store. I saw the company coming back, an’ they was a gwoine up then, and they met and talked awhile, an’ the company divided an’ let them go through. Let’s go down, an’ see Rives about this, Ned O’Bran, an’ git him to send a dispatch to the Governor to help us.”

“Well, come on,” replied Ned.

They entered the quiet office of the Justice, and found him sitting there alone, and looking over books and papers.

“General, what is you doing?” asked Harris, with emphasis.

“I am waiting for people to come into court again.”

“If you wait here awhile longer, they’ll make you jump out o’ here entirely!”

“What is the matter?”

“Well, there’s about four hundred men out there with guns and pistols.”

“Ah! I’ll go out and see—Well, really, this is surprising! What is all this about?”

“I don’t know,” said the excited Harris. “They’re gwoine to take the guns away from the armory.”

The three men walked up the street conversing. Meanwhile Captain Doc entered his own apartments, which it will be remembered, were in the same building as the armory or drill room.

“I’ve been in my shirt sleeves,” said he to his wife, “ever since I left my bench at noon; but, (with a grim smile,) if I’m gwoine to see such big men as General Baker or the Laud, I reckon I’d best put my coat on.”

“Oh, Doc, don’t talk so ’bout de Laud! I’m awful scarred to have yo’ go.”

“I’ve got a right to go. They say General Baker’s gone up to the Council Chamber, and he and Garndon’ll be expecting us.”

“I’m awful scarred fo’ yo’, an’ I’m a mind to go ’way myself. ’Spex they’ll be shootin’ ’round yere so the baby couldn’t sleep no how. Mann Harris, he’s taken his wife off, ’bout an hour by sun, or so, poor soul! sick as she’s been, now mighty nigh on to a year. Mann tole me he’d positive his word thar’ would be no fuss nor killin’; but I’d positive my word he war’ ’feared, else he wouldn’t come totin’ Dinah down all dem stairs, an hauled ’er off up to Miss Pipton’s; fo’ it’s mighty nigh on to fo’ mile ovah da; and Dinah has determined to me that it hurt her tolerable bad to stir at all.”

The Captain had been looking out of the window while she spoke, towards Dunn’s store and the Council Chambers, Turning abruptly, he asked—

“Where is the baby?”

“I done toted ’er ovah to Elder Jackson’s but I can’t let ’er stay dar. I’ll jes lock up de house, an’ git de baby, an’ clar out ovah de rivah, fo’ de scar o’ stayin’ in dis yere house’ll perish me out, if I’m de onus one fo’ a quarter hour mo’.”

“Now, Debby, yo’ get the baby, and take ’er over to Rives’s, and stay thar, he’s been so conciliating to ’em, and they think a heap o’ him. Blamed but I wish the baby was here a minute till I kiss ’er ’fo’ I go up to see General Baker. Don’t get scared now. They won’t hurt the women, I reckon. It’s only them as votes an’ can manage a gun they’re after. Take care yo’rself,” and he kissed her.

“Oh, ain’t yo’ scarred to go, Doc?” sobbed she, clinging to him. “I spex yo’re forced to by persuasion; but I’m feared they’ll put a bullet into yo’, and maybe fifty.” Here she broke down entirely, and wept aloud, sobbing, “Oh, don’t go, Doc! don’t go!”

“But I’ve got a right to, to save the town. He’ll lay it in ashes. I wouldn’t like to tell yo, all the way they’re talking, and making big threats, and abusing us to everything yo’ can think.”

“To my knowance they’re mighty bad; and I’m mighty glad Mann Harris sent his wife off.”

“Well, Debby, yo’ go and get the baby, and take good care of her. I reckon you’d best tote her ovah to your mother’s ’cross the river. Some on ’em might hurt her if they knowed she was mine.”

They left the house together, and Doc locked the door, and put the key in his pocket.

“Oh, my lawses!” exclaimed Mrs. Doc. “Don’t yo’ go up thar, Doc! Jes see such heaps o’ men! Jes lots and piles of ’em! Now yo’ sha’n’t go!”

“No mo’ I won’t! They picks out all the hardest places for a man to go to; but his soldiers ’d follow the General anywhere. There he is now. He ain’t gwoine to meet me. See! He knows I’m here well enough, but he won’t look at me. Ah! He’s gwoine over to the city. P’raps he’ll just clar out, now he’s got the rest agoing. There’s Kanrasp, and Rives too.”

General Rives and his two neighbors met General Baker at the next corner. The latter was on horseback and rode up to General Rives and demanded the name of the Colonel of the Eighteenth Regiment.

“Colonel Williams,” was the reply.

“Where is he?”

“At his house, I reckon.”

“I want him. I want those guns, and by——I’ve got to have them.”

“General Baker, I don’t know what to do about them. I’ll go up and see the Captain, and consult with him, and see if he says to give them up.”

A moment later and he met Judge Kanrasp, who was earnestly urging the colored men, women, and children who were huddled in knots upon the street, to go home and remain quietly in their houses.

“Kanrasp,” said Judge Rives, “It is no use for you to stay here and get killed; and you will be killed if you stay,—a ‘carpet-bagger and a radical,’ like you.”

“That’s so,” added Marmor, and Doc, and Watta, who now joined the group; and they hastily accompanied him down to the Rail Road platform nearly opposite the armory, and urged him to flee, as one who would be first attacked. Rapidly crossing the river, upon the Rail Road bridge, the train, which arrived, in ten minutes took him homewards; too soon for the accomplishment of his purpose to learn Gen. Baker’s mission to the city.

Never were the combative characteristics of the whites and colored races in the Southern States more clearly exhibited than in the scenes at Baconsville that day, though leading colored men, whose exceptional energy, and perhaps assertion, had made them such, were necessarily prominent. Not bravery, so much as skill in its exercise, constitutes the white man a leader among his fellows.

In general terms it may be said that timidity, with extremely rare acts of rashness, characterizes the colored race, bravado and arbitrary assumption, of the white and both are the victims of mutual suspicion and distrust, which often cause the dreaded ill.

Gen. Baker was absent half an hour, and on his return a general remounting took place, while over the hill at the back of the village, came a large company of horsemen, all well armed.

Down Main street they rode, two abreast, and were at once distributed throughout the town; a squad upon each street corner, attended by an equal number of infantry; all with weapons in hand ready for immediate action.

Look which way they would, the distracted freedmen saw armed men, and re-enforcements constantly arriving from all directions.

Darkness was approaching, and though the hills around were still touched by the glow of the setting sun, its refracted rays seemed to exaggerate the squalor, and magnify the deformities of the little town in the valley; and, exalting the warlike preparations, to clothe them with every imaginable horror; while the humidity of the evening air intensified the sounds of blood-thirsty riot.

Justice Marmor now closed and locked his office door, and began at this tardy moment, to think of adopting Mrs. M’s advice.

Stepping out of his own back door, he leaped the fence into his neighbor’s yard, and, mounting his doorsteps, stood in a closely latticed corner of a porch, and took observations.

The square was surrounded by the Rifle-clubs,—the remnants and second-growth of the cropped, but not uprooted Confederate cavalry,—standing thick, two abreast, with guns resting upon each left arm.

In the vernacular of the South, Marmor was “a scallawag,” for, though once a brave Confederate soldier, he had become a consistent advocate of the idea that the “all men” who are “created free and equal” includes the colored race; and probably no man in the devoted town stood in greater danger than he.

“Co im ’s house, Meester Marmor:——i’m ’s house quick!” said Dan Lemfield, opening the back-door of his dwelling. You be mine neighbor, and shall not be shot on mine dreshold. Co hide self! Co!”

Marmor did not decline the invitation, but stepped quickly in, and passing to the parlor in front, peeped from behind the window shades, which Mrs. Lemfield had drawn closely down.

At the opposite corner of the street, his most implacable enemy, the eldest son of Col. Baker, sat upon his horse, with self-complacent manner waiting the appearance of his prey, or the word of command from the great General. He was supported by eight or ten other men, not less vigilant.

“Oh, Mr. Marmor!” besought Mrs. Lemfield, “do go up stairs, and keep out of sight. They have threatened about you so much that some of them will surely come in here, and kill you! Do go up, quick! quick!”

Marmor obeyed, and immediately the host, who had been out, re-entered with wild eyes and white lips.

“Vo ish dat mon, Sarah?”

She signed with her hand, in reply; at the same time saying, in an indifferent tone, “Oh, he’s gone up, he is not here,” for their little child had entered, and she feared it might betray their guest.

The excited Jew (for Lemfield was a Jew) leaped up the stairs, calling out as he ran, “Don’t shoot! It’s me—jist me. Oh, moine goot freund! Vat vill dese men to? Shenneral Paker say he vill hab de guns, oder he vill pekin to fire in von half hour. Colonel A. P., dat ole man you seen sthrapping on dem pig bistols by’me Post Office, he tole me close up mine par in’ leetle sthore. Vell, dey ish hab too much visky now; so I mind quick, I tell you! He tole same ting yo’ mudda, an’ she pe shut up.”

“Where is she?” asked Marmor.

“My golly! Se ist plucky ole voman. Se im leetle sthore—all ’lone by self. She not come avay.”

“Where are my wife and children?”

“Im house—your house. Dat ish pest blace. Nicht wahr? Pest not pe mit you.”

“I don’t know,” replied Marmor, absently.

“Oh, ya! Mon come here, mon sag, ‘Meester dare sure.’ Now co dis vay,” and he led the way to a loft; “Here co om roof van dey get you. Hark! Vat dat noise down stair ish?”

The next instant Mrs. Marmor rushed into the chamber and threw her arms about her husband’s neck in a paroxysm of weeping.

He folded her to his breast, and commanding a calm and cheerful tone, said, “Jane, Jane, don’t give way so. Why, I’m not afraid; I shall come off all right, and nobody will hurt you or the children. Our people are chivalrous, and won’t hurt a woman.”

“Oh, you don’t know! you don’t know!” she sobbed. “Capt. Baker just now told me, as I was coming to bid you good-bye,” (here her sobs interrupted her speech) “he told me,” she resumed, “if I wanted to save my children from getting killed, to go into the house and lock the doors. And so I must go and save my poor babies. Duck got scared and ran off and left me all alone,” and she placed her cold trembling hands on either side of her husband’s face, and kissed him. Then pressing them upon her heart, she descended the stairs, moaning aloud.

“Great heavens! Am I a man?” exclaimed Marmor, “to let my wife go like that, and I hiding to save my own life!” and he sprang to the stairs to follow her.

Quick as thought, the Jew placed himself before him, and held him back.

“She be not cry for self; just for you. You co da, she cry more. Man not touch her, noh leetle kinder. Yo’ co hide now, quick!”

Five minutes later, the same Col. Baker, her husband’s enemy, rapped loudly upon Mrs. Marmor’s door, with the loaded handle of his riding-whip.

Almost too much frightened to stand, she opened the door, and peeped out.

“You must take your children, and leave this house if you do not want to be killed,” said the gallant Colonel.

“Oh, where shall I go? What shall I do?” cried the distracted mother.

“You must get out of here, and that is all I can tell you,” said he, with an oath. “No use to lock your door—leave it open, I tell you, and go!”

Nearly all the colored people had, by this time, taken the advice of Judge Kanrasp, or of their fears, and fled the streets. Like timid conies, some sought the vain shelter of their homes, others that of the neighboring cornfields or river-banks and bridges, and still others fled to the surrounding country.

Doc, Watta and Sems went across the street after Kanrasp left, taking about thirty or forty men with them to the drill-room on the second floor.

About this time four colored men were seen to issue from an humble dwelling, and, with heroic purpose as their only visible weapon, they quietly made their way along the fortified streets. They were frequently halted and their business demanded, when their uniform reply was “To see Gen. Baker;” and the moral sublimity of their position seemed to impress even the conscienceless rioters, for only verbal abuse was hurled at them.

Arm-in-arm walked Gen. Justice Rives and the Methodist preacher—Elder Jackson—(visibly quaking within his spotless linen, and coat of snowy whiteness). Behind this worthy pair came Springer, the chief man of money and of business in the town, with Lem Picksley, a well-known, peaceable, and long-time resident; the best educated and best-liked citizen.

At length they found the man they sought—armed, mounted and surrounded by cavalry arranged in warlike attitude, who appeared to reverence him as their chief.

“Gen. Baker,” said Rives, “we have come to ask if there is anything we can do to make peace.”

“Nothing will satisfy me but the surrender of the men and their guns.”

“We have no authority to surrender them, as you very well know. The men are not criminals convicted, and you have no warrant or authority of law; and the men say their oaths to the State forbid their surrendering the arms to you. If you can show any authority for receiving them, that you have more than any other private citizen, they will give them up at once; but they say they cannot otherwise, because, if they should voluntarily yield them up to you or any other private citizen, especially surrounded by such an armed body as this, without authority of law—well, General, you’re a lawyer, and you know what the law calls it. The law and their oath of office will not allow them.”

“Rives,” replied this great chieftain, “you are the Major General of the State Militia in this district, and can demand them.”

“Not without cause, or order from my superior!”

“By ——!” said the negro-catcher, Baker, who stood near, “you had better do something, for there’s going to be —— to pay here, if those officers and guns are not delivered up.”

“I want to see the Colonel of this regiment. I want these officers and these guns,” said Gen. Baker with great vehemence.

Ned O’Bran, who had joined the four peace-makers, now slipped through the crowd and back to the armory.

“How does it look, Ned?” asked Lieut. Watta from a window above his head.

“It looks squally. Now, Watta, you men just bar the windows and doors, and let nothing nor nobody in the world in there; and by this means they will have nothing nor nobody in the world to fight, if they want to fight, but themselves. There’s bound to be a fuss; for I heard Gen. Baker say myself, that what he intended to do this evening won’t stop till after the seventh of next November, and that is election day, you know. So shut yourselves up, and keep still.”

Watta closed the window, and Ned returned to the place of conference.

A horse pushed against Springer’s companion, and he mildly laid his hand upon the animal’s shoulder and said, addressing it, “Take care, sir!”

Quick as thought the rider’s whip cut a smart gash upon the dusky cheek.

The chivalrous Gen. Baker, looking on, took out his own pocket handkerchief, and wiped the perspiration from his own face, while the unoffending mulatto wiped the blood from his; and Springer’s unflinching eye arrested the hand of another of the General’s aids, as he was about to send a bullet through his (Springer’s) brain.

Neither the attack nor menace elicited rebuke nor notice from the “high-toned” General, who disdainfully turned and rode away.

“If we will box the guns up,” said Rives, following him, “and return them to the Governor, will that be satisfactory?”

“—— the Governor! I am not here as the Governor of South Carolina, nor his agent, but as General Baker!”

“Well, we are sorry if there is nothing we can do to make peace, General, but (turning to his companions) we must return without it, and each do the best he can for himself.”

“Here’s Ned O’Bran,” said Springer in an undertone, “Brother Jackson, you had better go with him, for his house is outside of the picket lines; and as you’re a member of the Legislature, you must look out—they’ll be after you shor.”

“I was just going down to the drill room to be safe myself,” said O’Bran. “My family went on so that I am on my way back to the armory.”

“You can’t get through this way. The pickets are everywhere. You had best go home. It’s every man for himself, and the Lord for us all,” said Springer, and the men separated.

CHAPTER VIII.
MEMORY AND EXPERIENCE.

“Oh! the blessed hope of freedom how with joy and glad surprise,
For an instant throbs her bosom, for an instant beam her eyes!

Oh, my people! O my brothers! let us choose the righteous side.”

—Whittier’s Voices of Freedom.

The sun was sinking in the west, when the sound of Aunt Phoebe’s dinner-horn was heard, followed by Uncle Jesse’s cheery response.

Auntie was the model-housekeeper of the neighborhood, (not a high compliment, some readers might think, could they see many of the homes there, where the women spend most of their strength and time at field labor), she having been raised a house-servant, and, by rare chance, blessed with a mistress who gave her personal attention to the comfort of her household.

Auntie’s house boasted glazed windows, two rooms and a loft; and the broad boards of her floors were so clean and white that her kitchen was quite inviting as dining-room and sitting-room also.

Her iron tea-kettle shone and steamed beside a small cherry back-log upon the great hearth, which spread below the wide “Dutch-back” chimney, while the hoe-cakes were “keeping” between a blue-edged earthen plate, and a bright tin pan, upon a hot stone near by, and a kettle of boiling corn, filled the room with its sweet aroma.

The snowy cloth spread upon the table in the middle of the floor, was set about with crockery almost antique,—the gift of “old Missus’” when she “broke up,” because the great plantation was sold for taxes.

During the war the Confederate and Union armies had swept over the region in alternation, like swarms of locusts, taking every marketable thing; Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation of Emancipation had freed every “hand,” and, as the old lady had lost all her sons in the war, and all her means to hire laborers, and would not lease to niggers, she folded her hands and let her remaining possessions drift from her, and finally died a pensioner upon her friends.

Many a time had Aunt Phoebe’s childish hands washed these same cups and plates, while her mother cooked for “the great house;” and as she now brought an extra large plate, she paused, and with eyes fixed upon it, a long stretch of years seemed to pass before her.

“Make hay while the sun shines,” she spelled around the sunny picture of hay-makers in the centre of the plate; and before her seemed to arise the placid face of her poor mother; and again she heard her say,—“Dat’s ’de way ’dey do at ‘de North, chile’. ’Taint ’de colored folks as does all ’de work dar’. Oh Lord! oh Lord!” I was ’mos’ free——thought I was free shor’ ’dat time Missus tuck me ’not’h wid’ her. Mighty nice gem’men tole’ me I war free;—I needn’t go back South no ’mo’. So I jes walks off: but, oh laws! He didn’t know ’nuffin ’bout ’dem United States Marshal ’dey call ’em, I ’reckon; but may be ’dey didn’t ’blong to no United States, nohow. Spex’ ’dey come from South Caroline. ’Dey tole’ I ’jes got go ’long back wid Missus, or ’de whole ’dem United States ’sogers’d he afe’r me, shor; Wal, Wal, ’pears like ’day didn’t none of ’em know nohow; fo’ nother gem’men said ’dem United States Marshals hadn’t got ’nuffin to do wid me, nohow, ’cause Missus’ brung me ’long herself. I didn’t run away ’nohow, ’cause I neber was so low as a runaway nigger. ’Pears like I didn’t know who ’t believe, an so I came back ’long wid’ Missus to make shor’.

“Po’re ole’ Lize, she lived nex’ do’ to Missus’ hotel. She used to set by ’de pump in ’de back yard, evenings, and smoke and smoke. “Dar was a young miss ’dar, used to come too, ’an talk ’wid us, ’an she tole’ Lize war free, and I war’ free, ’cause we didn’t runned away from ’de South. ’Reckon she war right, now; but I didn’t know, an’ she war’ young.” Lize was ole an’ been sick aheap, an’ wan’t ’woth much. She was ’gwoine to be sold in St. Loo, an’ all her chillun,—five chillun. ’Dey sold right smart, but no body didn’t want Lize; but a bad man said he’d give twenty dollah.”

“Lize seen a mighty nice gem’man from de No’th da, an’ she got hold his feet, an’ roared an’ cried till he bought her.

“Wal, ’pears like he didn’t know what t’do wid her af’r all; hadn’t got no wife, no nothin’ but lots o’ money. Well, shoo’ ’nuff’ dat bery night he tuck mighty sick. Ole Lize nussed ’im night and day, six, eight weeks or mo’, till he got well, Doctah said ’Dar’s de ole creatur dat save yo’ life. It wa’nt me, nohow.’ Wal, Mars’ Sam war mighty good den to ole Lize. He tuck ’er off No’th, and spex cause he hadn’t got nothin’ nor no place, he coaxed ’er to stay wid ’is sistah. But, laws! she wa’n’t like he. She’s cross, an’ scold ole Lize a heap, when she’s crying ’bout her boys jes’ been sole ’way down t’ New Orleans, ’cause dey war so high spirited like, an’ Lize wa’n’t dar to keep ’im quiet like. Lize wanted t’ go back to St. Loo, an’ see ’er girls. Cross woman! She tole ole Lize all dat to make ’er fret; an’ Mars Sam ’ad writ dat, dat war why he didn’t wan’r Lize to come back, cause he didn’t want ’er to fret. Poor soul! couldn’t write to Mars’ Sam.

“Laws, I’s young an’ spry den, an’ wanted to be free powerful bad; but de Laud he say, I mus’ stay right yere, an’ cook for Missus, a slave all my life, maybe.” Fresh and clear as when first spoken, Aunt Phebe seemed to hear these tales which once impressed her youthful mind.

And then right between the hay-makers and Auntie’s eyes there came another picture. She could see the great smoke rolling up over the woods beyond the cotton field, and hear the cannon’s roar, and the shells screeching and crashing through the trees, and see “old Missus” wringing her hands and weeping, and praying the good Lord to spare her four sons who were fighting in the confederate ranks; and all the slaves were praying for the “Yankees,” while they exhausted every means to soothe and comfort “old missus.”

That same night, when the house servants were all in her cabin except Lucy, who was “staying wid Missus,” Uncle Tim, the plantation preacher, was repeating what scripture passages he could remember, there came a loud rap on the closed door behind.

“If yo’ de Laud o’ de Debbil,” said Uncle Tim, “in de name ob de Laud, I tell yo’ come in,” and a Yankee soldier entered.

There she could see him stand in the light of the “fat pine” which Tim put on the fire—the “Lincom Soger”—repeating the Proclamation of Emancipation. How plainly he stood out now! and the great light that shone around him seemed almost to smite her blind as it did then.

There was dear old granddaddy, with wrinkled hands that had toiled without recompense for nearly a century, clasped tightly together. How slowly and easily he slipped from his chair onto the floor! She thought he was kneeling; but when she bent to help him, she heard his whisper, “Free into glory! Free into glory! ’Tain’t no niggah slave yo’ comin’ fo’, Angel!” and his withered lips closed forever on earth, while his “new song,” broke forth from lips of fadeless bloom, in a land where love makes slavery impossible.

And there she saw “Mammy”—the dear form swaying backwards and forwards as she wept and moaned, “Oh, wicked, cruel man to cheat poor slaves! It is too good for true! too good for true!”

And then, before Aunt Phebe, opened the two deep graves where they buried them side by side, father and daughter, grandfather and mother. The tardy emancipation that had opened slavery’s dungeon had opened also the pearly gates for the aged and the invalid.

The big hot tears were rolling slowly down Auntie’s cheeks and threatening a briny shower upon the hay-makers, when Uncle Jesse’s step upon the threshold startled her, and the plate fell to the floor and broke into a score of pieces.

She dropped into a chair, threw her apron over her head, and wept aloud.

“Wal! wal! wal!” said her husband, as he scraped the soil from his shoes at the door, “crying that way about a broked up plate? Oh! it’s one old Missus gave yo’,” he added, as he approached the fragments.

As suddenly as her grief had seemed to come, she flung her apron from her face, tossed up both her arms, and broke into a loud, clear strain; laughing, clapping her hands, shrieking and stamping her feet:

“Glory and honor, praise King Jesus!
“Glory and honor, praise de Lamb!
“Oh Jesus comin’ dis way
“Don’t let your chariot wheels delay!
“Jesus Christ comin’ in his own time;
“Take away de mudder leabe the baby behind.”

“Oh you got that wrong,” said Uncle Jesse, who, with his two workmen had joined lustily in the chorus. It’s “Take away the baby, leave the mother behind.”

“I sings it jes as I wants it,” replied his wife. “De Laud he tuck my mudder, an’ he lef’ me behind.”

“Give me grace fo’ to run dat race,
“Heaben shall be my hidin’-place;
“Wet or dry, I means to try
“To get up into heaben when I die.
“If yo’ get dar befo’ I do,
“Tell dem I am comin’ too.

“Glory and honor, praise &c.

“God be callin,’ trumpet be soundin’;
“Don’t dat look like judgment day?
“De tombs be bustin’, de dead be risin’,
“De wheels ob time shall not be no mo.

“Glory and honor, praise, &c.

“Chariot dartin’ to de new grabe-yard;
“Go down angels and veil wid de sun;
“Go down angels and veil wid the moon,
“Fo’ the wheels ob time shall not be no mo.”

“Glory and honor, praise, &c.

“It’s de Debbil’s bad luck! fo’ I seen dat plate gwoine down on de flo’; but I sung to de Laud, an’ He’ll break de cha’m,” said Auntie, with the evident satisfaction of one who has been at once shrewd and dutiful. (It is thought an ill omen to see crockery fall, if it breaks.)

“Auntie, I shall like mighty well to see dat chariot comin’, when I sho’ de Laud is in it, said Brother Johnson,” the class leader, who was one of the workmen, “but jes at dis pertickeler time I wants to be gnawin’ one o’ dem cawn-cobs in dat skillet.”

“A wicked an’ a glutton man de Laud He despise,” she retorted, as she arose, and casting a reproving glance upon the offender proceeded to “dish up” the repast. Meanwhile Brother Gibson struck up the following:

“I lub my sistah, dat I do!
“Hope my sistah may lub me too:
“If yo’ get dar yo’ gwoine to sing an’ tell
“De fo’ arch-angels to tune de bell.”

Supper was announced just as the sun reached the “hour mark” upon the cabin floor, which had done duty as indicator of the time for the evening meal for many months; and further musical exercises were indefinitely postponed.

The repast had not yet been disposed of when the voice of a man was heard calling, “Whoop! whoop!”

“That is Den Bardun,” said Uncle Jesse, as he sprung from the table to the door.

“Hello! What’s wanted?” he shouted in reply.

“Man here from Baconsville wants help. Says they’re killing all the colored people over there. Will you go?”

“Come over; come over, and bring him along;” and Uncle Jesse hastened back to the table to finish his meal while the twain should be pacing the two hundred yards intervening between the two dwellings.

They entered presently, both much excited, and the Baconsville man bearing a double barreled shot-gun.

“What is the matter?” asked the host, gulping down a half cup of coffee and leaving the table to greet his guests. “I couldn’t hear half you said.”

“Ugh! Matter enough!” replied Den. “Tell him, Sterns.”

“Why, the town of Baconsville is just running over of armed white men—rifle-clubs, regular cavalry companies, and they’re going to kill all the niggers, ravish the women, and burn the houses, and put all the children to death!”

“No! no! no!” cried Uncle Jesse. “Tell a man something he can believe now! They won’t do no such thing as that. The white folks has got more sense ’n that. They won’t do no such things, and I don’t believe it! You are scart and excited.”

“Just go and see then, Mr. Roome. If you don’t believe me, may be you won’t believe your own eyes,” replied the man.

“Well, Roome, come on! Let’s go and see for ourselves; for if it is true, we ought to help,” said Brother Gibson.

“No sir! You just wait, and keep inside the law!” said Jesse Roome, after scratching his head thoughtfully a moment. “I believe in law, and them that has kept inside the law is the ones that is coming out ahead.”

Sterns then gave a graphic description of the incidents, threats, and indications in Baconsville, up to the close of the court-scene at about half past four o’clock.

Of course the whole group were intensely excited, and Aunt Phebe listened, shrieked, and prayed by turns; but Uncle Jesse was still firm in his first decision to keep inside the law.”

“There’s been heaps of threats, I know, enough to make a man intimidate of his shadow; but there’s a pile o’ bluster and brag in these old aristocrats; just like a barking dog though, he’ll never bite.”

“Heigh! but they be a biting now, sho,” said Sterns with a shrug.

“And then our folks ha’n’t always done right,” Mr. Roome continued. “It’s a new thing for us to make laws and be officers, and all that; and some thinks ’cause they make the laws, that they needn’t keep ’em; and some is mighty ambitious, and likes to pay off old scores through the laws. Now that a’n’t right, and it can’t do no good, nohow. Some laws has been made wrong, and some has been executed wrong, and it a’n’t reasonable to suppose that a man that has been a slave all his life, and ha’n’t had nothing to do ’bout no laws only to be lashed when his master has a mind to, is going to rise right up and know everything at once. And the masters that has been masters over us so long, I suppose it’s mighty hard for them to stand the nigger majorities in this State, and have the niggers that they used to have under them, just like that dog now, making laws for them, and in the offices. Well, now, we ought to think o’ these things, on both sides, and have patience and do the best we can, and keep inside the law. If the militia company and the white folks has got up a quarrel over there in Baconsville, and either of them is going to breaking the laws—well, I a’n’t going over there to join ’em in doing it! That is all.”

“But it’s the white folks that is breaking the laws; and I’m surprised that yo,’ Mr. Roome, a’n’t ready to help us against ’em. They’re all there, mounted and armed, and officered; and they says they shall have these men and their guns. The militia ha’n’t got guns enough there, and not scarcely no ammunition; and they’re just going to be massacred!”

“No! no!” replied Uncle Jesse, “that won’t be done. Them white folks know we’ve got a Governor and courts.”

“But there’s too many of ’em for the courts to stop ’em. There’s two or three thousand, all armed, and some of ’em is the biggest men in the State, the old aristocrats; and the Governor’s militia can’t do nothing against these Rifle Clubs yo’ know, these old confederate soldiers that served in the war. They’re all them, or the one’s they’ve trained up, are officering now.”

“I know, I know,” said Jesse, “but you know there’s the United States. The United States won’t see us killed off that way.”

“‘Cause the United States is too fur off to see it; and when we’re all killed, the United States can’t bring us alive again.”

“Why didn’t they just let them two young fellows go through that company in the first place on the 4th of July? It’s mighty provoking to see the niggers celebrating the 4th with the same flag they used to brag so much about ’fore the wa’, (though they have hated it ever since), and the State guns, and all! We’ve growed so big now, we can afford to stoop down to such little fellows as they’ve got to being. What’s the use o’ keeping up a quarrel when we’ve got to live together?”

“Now, Jesse,” said Den Bardun, “we’ve been stooped mighty nigh double all our lives, and our fathers and grandfathers before us, and some of their backs is getting stiff. It’s well enough to make a bow, but some folks don’t enjoy being rid over, and I reckon yo’r one.”

“I can’t stay to hear yo’ talk, and if yo’ a’n’t men enough to go and help yo’ neighbors when they is getting jist slayed, I’m gwine to find some men somewhar; and if ever yo’ wants help like us, to save yo’ life and property, maybe yo’ll get it. I hope so,” and Sterns hastened away.

Uncle Jesse paced up and down the room for some moments, with his arms folded and his chin upon his breast; while Den Bardun leaned against the door-post, and watched alternately this neighbor and the chickens a hen was endeavoring to call into a coop in which she was confined near the door.

“It seems hard! It does seem hard!” said Roome, without raising his eyes from the floor, “and it seems cruel like, I know it does. But it is right! I know it is right! and I feel it right in my breast,” looking up with an assured manner, and striking his broad chest with his palms. “Sit down, Den, sit down. What do you think about this doings?”

“I believe it’s a mighty hard affair, and I’m afraid it’s a big one; and I don’t believe it’s all about the 4th of July scrape, either. It’s more like the democratic party, and they’re playing off that it’s the militia.”

“What makes you think so, Dan?”

“Well, Deacon Atwood, he says to me the other day, says he, “All the officers of the Republican party has got to be killed out, shor;” and I asked him what for?”

“Was he talking of the colored officers or of all of ’em?”

White and black, making no exceptions. He says, “we’re going to have this election, and the only way we can get it, will be to kill out the leading men, and then the ignorant men will do right.”

“Mr. Atwood came here the other day,” said Jesse, “I’d hired Mott Erkrap, you know, to work for me, and he left me because I wouldn’t give him 4th of July; and he wanted to come back, and I wouldn’t take him back. The Deacon came concerning him, and he said then that the Republican party, before long, was going to ketch the Devil, (Uncle Jesse lowered his voice as if in awe of his Satanic Majesty.) Says he “There’ll be worse than seventy-seven claps of thunder striking right against them. Of course we was astonished at his speaking so rash and ’reverent right here in the yard. We was all very much astonished, me and my wife, and Mott Erkrap, and a stranger from the city that came with Mott, at his speaking so rash and ’revrent at what would happen to the Republican party in short time.”

“Hark!” exclaimed Aunt Phebe, raising her hands. “Oh, Lord! they be a killing ’em!”

The sound of small arms came unmistakably upon the evening air.

“Oh, no! It takes more’n one bird to make a spring. It a’nt so strange to hear a gun fire!” said Uncle Jesse; at the same time approaching the door to listen.

“But there’s another! and another! and heaps of ’em!” said she, becoming almost frantic with excitement.

“Good Lord! they be a fighting!” exclaimed both Dan and Jesse.

Several of the nearer neighbors soon came running up, breathless and alarmed, to ask what should be done.

“What is all we gwoine to do, Uncle Jesse?” asked a small coal-black man, rushing up to the yard, gun in hand. “Don’t ye think we ought to go down and help ’em!—!—! but it’s awful to hear them guns and stand here with my good rifle in my hands doing nothin’;” and he strode back and forth in front of the door where the group was standing, clasping his trusty weapon to his breast.

“You’d best remember the Lord in such a time as this, anyhow, and not be swearing,” replied Roome. “The more goes there, the worse and the bigger that fuss has got to be, and the more colored people will get killed any how for the whites has got to beat. No, no, Penny you’d best keep away if you don’t want to be killed.”

“I wonder where Deacon Atwood is?” asked Den Bardum.

“He a’n’t there, you may be shor. He’ll talk big, and put the rest up, but keep safe hisself,” said Jesse.

“How about that Sheriff’s office?” and Penny looked significantly at both Jesse and Den.

“That’s so,” said Den, “we three did promise to get him nominated on the Republican ticket, didn’t we? He was mighty in love with our Governor then.”

“But the Governor won’t support this kind of doings,” said Roome.

“Goodness gracious! Just hear the guns!” said Penny, “We’ll see fire pretty soon. They’ll be burning houses, certain.”

“I do hope this isn’t our folks begun this,” said Jesse. “I hope they’ll keep inside the law, and then the United States can protect us, and not let the white folks here kill us all off. But if our folks begun this, the good Laud knows what will become of us all. If Deacon Atwood goes in for this kind of thing, I’ll go back on him; for I won’t stick to any body that violates the law. My motto is to punish every man, white and black, that violates the law. It does seem mighty hard to stand here, and hear them guns, and believe that somebody’s getting killed; but I feel in my breast that it is the right thing to do. Does any of you know who’s gone over from Bean Island?—any of the neighbors?”

“Of the white folks? or the colored?”

“Either one.”

“Dr. Ave, Joe Ennery, Coot Hogg, and Ramal Bardun, John Rammel, and Robert Blending has gone; and Captain Black, and Williams, and I expect the Payne boys.”

“Do you know that, Penny?” and Uncle Jesse bit his lips.

“Yes, I met them near sundown, gallopping hard that way; or rather, I didn’t meet the Payne boys.”

“Hist! There comes the old man.”

“Good evening Mr. Payne,” said the host, extending his right hand in a cordial welcome, while with his left he made a sign behind his back, commanding caution.

This was clearly visible, though the sun’s light had entirely faded; for the cabin door, near the outside of which they stood, was wide open, and a fire of fat pine was filling the broad chimney’s throat with a sheet of flame.

“Old man Payne” was a small man, with a large head, quick, deep-set gray eyes, under a broad brow which was crowned with snowy hair.

He it was who had counselled discretion, moderation and honorable dealing at the Club meeting at which Watson Atwood was initiated into the mysteries of modern southern politics.

A descendant of an honored southern family, he yet seemed from infancy to have inherited many notions which were antagonistic to the environments of his childhood, and which several seasons spent in New England, in the early home of his mother, served to strengthen and intensify.

His wife, always fully Southern in ideas and sympathies, had reared their children so, aided by their surroundings, while he had very quietly cherished his own sentiments.

A chair was brought, and he seated himself without speaking, sighed heavily, folded his small nervous hands, and gazed away into the darkness; and as volley followed volley, he shuddered, and wept.

“Good God,” said he at length, “I had hoped this kind of thing was over! Jesse, what do you know about this?”

“Nothing,” was the prompt reply. “I know nothing; at least, I’ve just heard that there’s a fuss between the Militia company and the white folks. Do you know who’s in it, Mr. Payne. Who begun it, I mean?”

“I only know they say the officers would not go to court, but just fortified themselves in the armory, and defied the law, and said they were going to fight. Joe Morey says they’ve been making awful threats lately, and so the Rifle clubs were called out to sustain General Baker, who undertook to conduct the suit for Robert Baker and Gaston.”

“Defied the law? How’s that, Mr. Payne?”

“I don’t know Jesse, but that is what Joe Morey said.”

“Is that all you know about it?”

“Yes.”

“Has any body gone over from here, from the Island, I mean?”

“Yes, some on both sides, I guess.”

“And what is the intentions of the white folks?”

“I do not know, except that they intend to get some security that the negroes shall give up their guns, and stop drilling. They say they do not feel secure in their lives and property while the Militia is drilling with arms in their hands.”

“What has the colored people ever done? And why don’t they treat them so well that they won’t be afraid of them? They’re State Militia.”

“I know, I know that Jesse; but our boys will listen to nothing. I’m afraid of the consequences, and do not want another war.”

“A good many of ’em is pretty old “boys,”—old Confederate soldiers,” said Roome, “and there can’t be much that is worse than this, judging by the guns we hear. How do you know there’s any gone?”

“They went by my store, and I tried to persuade them not to go.”

“Who was they?”

“I can not give names, Jesse.”

“Did Hankins go, Mr. Payne?”

“I cannot tell, Jesse; but I’m glad you are all here. If you stay here, you will not be hurt. But I didn’t think till now,——some of them may be straggling off here, and I had better go back to my store,” and the old man walked sadly away.

The night had set in, dark and moonless; and an hour’s brisk discharge of small arms was followed, (after an interval of respite), by the booming of cannon, which heightened the terror and direful forebodings of the listeners.

Uncle Jesse’s dwelling became a tabernacle to the Lord that night; for from it arose the ceaseless voice of true prayer—“the soul’s sincere desire,” through all those hours of darkness and terror, till just ere the dawn of the Sabbath morning, his neighbors departed to their several places of abode.

CHAPTER IX.
THE SITUATION.

“Peace fool!

I would have peace and quietness, but the fool will not.”

Shakespere.

Uncle Jesse, as the reader is by this time aware, was a man of influence among his neighbors, few of whom, of either race, were capable of such just and comprehensive views of their political and social relations.

Little influenced by color prejudice (which is common to both races, though from widely different causes and in various degrees, throughout the United States), he possessed great reverence for law, as such; a fact mainly due to a residence of several years among the law-abiding people of that portion of the State of Ohio known as The Western Reserve, at a period when his mind was peculiarity receptive.

Born a slave in 1834, he seized the first opportunity offered by the late war, to flee from bondage and learn to live like a man.

Aunt Phebe preferred to wait with their two little children, her invalid mother, and aged grandfather, for the coming of the “Yankees,” which was confidently and hopefully expected.

And so in 1867 Uncle Jesse returned and found her and their children free, and thriving, in the same cabin in which he left them, though the “big house” was vacant, and the plantation in new hands.

At that time the Southern States were rife with utter lawlessness and bitter animosities; and acts of malicious and cruel outrage were frequent occurrences.

From the first settlement of the State, society had been divided into many and antagonistic classes, throughout which, however, prevailed an universal and sycophantic aping, each class of that above it; while the upper stratum sat in serene security of social distinction—fortune or misfortune, personal respectability or degradation, culture or ignorance, plethora or poverty, all were forgotten or obscured in the penumbra of that formidable and enigmatical word birth, untitled though it must be.

Now that the old landmarks had to some extent been swept away, there followed a general and tumultuous scramble in the debris, each being anxious to secure all that was possible, or failing, to resent the affront of another’s success.

Thus the worst elements and characteristics of every class were made prominent.

Families bred in opulence, and accustomed to claim the unpaid toil of others as their rightful due, and to believe political leadership and oligarchal control their birth-right, and who, like their ancestors for generations, cherished contempt for all who worked for their own subsistence, found extreme humiliation in laboring for their own bread, and submitting to the legal restrictions imposed by the general government, controlled as it was by those they had formerly derided as the “mud-sills” of the North, even though those restrictions were equitable and generous. In resentment of the equal citizenship conferred upon their former chattled slaves, they committed, and defended in each other, such outrages upon the persons and property of the negroes and resident northern whites, as are not even admissable between civilized enemies at open war.

Not a few planters who formerly owned thousands of acres of land, and from three to five thousand slaves, were, by the failure of the Rebellion, for the success of which they had staked all their possessions, as poor as the “cracker” families, which had formerly “squatted” like caterpillars and locusts upon the skirts of their plantations. They were even sometimes subjected to these as magistrates and officials, as they often were to their former slaves.

This haughty planter-race, having utterly failed in its last great pretension in bitterness of spirit still cherished its disdain for those it could not conquer, into which disdain the education of two hundred and fifty years of irresponsible ownership of laborers has concentrated the egotism, the selfishness and the cruelty thus engendered.

The intelligence of this class was never commensurate with its wealth. Schools were necessarily few in the South during the existence of slavery, and family feuds and favoritisms notoriously controlled the distribution of the honors of those that did exist, and social and political distinction depended upon culture in no degree. Hence there was little to spur the laggard, or to encourage and inspire genius, and the actual ignorance, or at best, the superficial scholarship of “the first families” was astounding. Since the war, poverty and aversion to the North have materially lessened southern patronage of northern schools, and under the “carpet-bag” administration the higher schools of the State, and the common schools in country districts in which the aggregate number of pupils did not warrant the opening of more than one school, were accessible to colored students; a recognition of equality which the whites would not tolerate; and so they consigned themselves to ignorance.

The class formerly known as “sand-hillers,” “crackers,” or “poor white trash,” were lazy, filthy and ignorant, and frequently degraded below the level of the slaves. These, with the class next above them in the social scale—the “working people,” who owned few or no slaves, and labored with their own hands on small farms, or as mechanics, experienced a social promotion nearly equal to that of the slaves; as emancipation, the ravages of war, and a more general distribution of land, through confiscation and sales for delinquent taxes, broke up the land monopoly and political retainership which had so long existed to the opulence of the planters, and the semi-mendicity of the lower classes.

The confederate service had also given acceptable occupation and wages, and even some inferior military titles to men who had formerly begged, or stolen, or starved, rather than earn their bread by honest labor; and such military glory, won in defence of “The Lost Cause,” could not be utterly ignored in the contest for recognition of some sort.

The class called “respectable people,” consisting of artists, merchants and professional men, teachers, &c., whose title to recognition rested upon wealth and culture, probably received the change with the most equilibrity, while the freedmen had everything to gain, and nothing to lose.

The most ignorant of them well knew that it was to “de Yankees,” “de Lincum sogers, de United States,” or “Mar’s Lincom,” that they were indebted for emancipation. The raving of their masters against northern abolitionists was, to them, quite sufficient evidence that somehow the war had its origin, near or remote, in northern antagonism to slavery.

History will never fail to record the good behavior of the freedmen of the southern states of America, the causes of which were manifold.

The experiences and legends of the slaveship, and centuries of repetition of similar evidence, had taught the African that there were other powers, stronger than brute force, which he could not command.

Again, he was not self-liberated. The brother of his master had been his deliverer (whatever may have been his motive), and gratitude, the moral attraction of gravitation, is the strongest moral power in the universe; which the All-Father well knew when He sent His Son to suffer.

This deliverer, this brother, believed in law, the invisibility and incomprehensibility of which appealed to the superstition of the emancipated slaves. This northern brother had struggled desperately with the tyrant, poured out his treasure and shed his blood without stint in the conflict; and having conquered, stood with weapons in either hand, to command the peace in the name of this invisible and incomprehensible law; while the religious, industrial, and educational influences which he summoned from his northern home, coming up while yet the atmosphere was tremulous with the sounds of expiring conflict, brought food for hungry bodies, intellects and souls; healing for lacerated spirits; and the vesture of a better civilization for the nakedness of the black, and the mail-chafed form of the white.

Women who pressed to the battle-front with a cup of water for the lips of the dying, and a pillow for the wounded head that lay upon the bloody sward, from hearts baptized to self-sacrifice, and pens lit with the zeal of the Nazarene, sent white-winged, burning messages all over the news-reading North; and while from thousands of homes there, brave men came with flaunting flags, and beating drums, and booming cannons, singing as they marched:

“We are coming, Father Abr’am,
Three hundred thousand more,”

and

“We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree.”

(and voluntarily broke that pledge,) from out those same homes stole a procession of women, not clandestinely, not timidly, but brave of soul and strong of heart and inflexible of purpose, though without ostentation. The bible and spelling-book were their only weapons, and their song was of “the mercies of the Lord forever,” and their “trust under the feathers of His wings!” “Neither the terror by night,” “the arrow by day,” “the pestilence in darkness,” nor “destruction at noon,” nor the “thousand falling on their right hand,” and on their left, could make them afraid; “because they had made the Lord their strength, even the Most High their refuge.” They went forth to “tread upon the lion and the adder, the young lion and the dragon.” Scorn, insult, slander, poverty, loneliness, sickness and death, they trampled under their feet; for “through the work of the Lord were they made glad,” and they “triumphed in the work of His hands.”

Away on in the Elysian fields of heaven, when the cycles of eternity shall have encircled the universe, and rolled back upon their track in such repeated and intricate mazes as only the Infinite mind can trace, they shall receive from the lips of the ransomed of all nations, “the blessing of those once ready to perish”; and the blessed assurance that the torch they lit in the freedman’s hut, lit a beacon that illumined the world.

If the South is saved to civilization, its chief human savior was “the nigger school-teacher.”

To these evidences of kindly interest on the part of the Northern people, and the influence of, and confidence implied in the immediate presence of feminine representatives of the best and most peaceable element of the North, certainly not less is due than to the natural timidity of the race, or their great faith in ultimate Divine deliverance, which needed intelligent direction.

Evidently the most difficult lesson, and yet that most needed by all the former inhabitants of the southern states is reverence for, trust in, and submission to law. The old habit of irresponsible authority, of domination instead of true democracy—the idea that the sovereign citizen may be superior to the law enacted by the popular will, is hard to eradicate.

Like the writhing beheaded serpent, which responds with slow-dying malice to the glow of the sun that does not make night because its green eyes are sightless, beheaded slaveocratic feudalism blindly ejects its spite at inevitable oncoming civilization.

Through the philanthropic movements which have been indicated, an entirely new ingredient was injected among the heterogeneous elements of southern society which were seeking a new basis, and a few northern soldiers, enamored of the delicious climate and naturally productive soil to which war and conquest had introduced them, and from which slavery had formerly excluded them, brought their families from Northern homes, or married daughters of this sunny land, and became permanent residents. Then followed capitalists, allured by the numerous apparently good investments the almost universal bankruptcy afforded.

With these came money, and such industry, enterprise, skill and public spirit as was before unknown in that slavery-cursed land; and the pecuniary results of which the Southerner can only account for by supposed political corruption or downright stealing from the public funds—the most familiar means.

Still the formerly favored class, true to its arrogance, and not ignored by those accustomed to worship at its shrine, ranks the possessor of one of its patronymics, especially if garnished by military title won or sustained in confederate service, among the most enviable of men; for “The Lost Cause” is as dear to South Carolinians as ever—an ideal worshiped all the more devoutly because of its unreality, and with demonstration necessarily somewhat restrained.

CHAPTER X.
THE ATTACK.

“Shepherd—Name of mercy, when was this, boy?

Clo.—Now, now; I have not winked since I saw these sights; the men are not yet cold under water, nor the bear half dined on the gentleman; he’s at it now.