THE CLANSMAN

BY

THOMAS DIXON
 THE CLANSMAN
Book I—The Assassination
CHAPTER I
THE BRUISED REED
The fair girl who was playing a banjo and singing to the wounded
soldiers suddenly stopped, and, turning to the surgeon, whispered:
“What’s that?”
“It sounds like a mob——”
With a common impulse they moved to the open window of the hospital
and listened.
On the soft spring air came the roar of excited thousands sweeping
down the avenue from the Capitol toward the White House. Above all
rang the cries of struggling newsboys screaming an “Extra.” One of
them darted around the corner, his shrill voice quivering with
excitement:
“Extra! Extra! Peace! Victory!”
Windows were suddenly raised, women thrust their heads out, and
others rushed into the street and crowded around the boy, struggling to
get his papers. He threw them right and left and snatched the money—
no one asked for change. Without ceasing rose his cry:
“Extra! Peace! Victory! Lee has surrendered!”
At last the end had come.
The great North, with its millions of sturdy people and their exhaustless
resources, had greeted the first shot on Sumter with contempt and
incredulity. A few regiments went forward for a month’s outing to settle
the trouble. The Thirteenth Brooklyn marched gayly Southward on a
thirty days’ jaunt, with pieces of rope conspicuously tied to their
muskets with which to bring back each man a Southern prisoner to be
led in a noose through the streets on their early triumphant return! It
would be unkind to tell what became of those ropes when they
suddenly started back home ahead of the scheduled time from the first
battle of Bull Run.
People from the South, equally wise, marched gayly North, to whip five
Yankees each before breakfast, and encountered unforeseen difficulties.
Both sides had things to learn, and learned them in a school whose logic
is final—a four years’ course in the University of Hell—the scream of
eagles, the howl of wolves, the bay of tigers, the roar of lions—all locked
in Death’s embrace, and each mad scene lit by the glare of volcanoes of
savage passions!
But the long agony was over.
The city bells began to ring. The guns of the forts joined the chorus, and
their deep steel throats roared until the earth trembled.
Just across the street a mother who was reading the fateful news turned
and suddenly clasped a boy to her heart, crying for joy. The last draft of
half a million had called for him.
The Capital of the Nation was shaking off the long nightmare of horror
and suspense. More than once the city had shivered at the mercy of
those daring men in gray, and the reveille of their drums had startled
even the President at his desk.
Again and again had the destiny of the Republic hung on the turning of
a hair, and in every crisis, Luck, Fate, God, had tipped the scale for the
Union.
A procession of more than five hundred Confederate deserters, who had
crossed the lines in groups, swung into view, marching past the hospital,
indifferent to the tumult. Only a nominal guard flanked them as they
shuffled along, tired, ragged, and dirty. The gray in their uniforms was
now the colour of clay. Some had on blue pantaloons, some, blue vests,
others blue coats captured on the field of blood. Some had pieces of
carpet, and others old bags around their shoulders. They had been
passing thus for weeks. Nobody paid any attention to them.
“One of the secrets of the surrender!” exclaimed Doctor Barnes. “Mr.
Lincoln has been at the front for the past weeks with offers of peace and
mercy, if they would lay down their arms. The great soul of the
President, even the genius of Lee could not resist. His smile began to
melt those gray ranks as the sun is warming the earth to-day.”
“You are a great admirer of the President,” said the girl, with a curious
smile.
“Yes, Miss Elsie, and so are all who know him.”
She turned from the window without reply. A shadow crossed her face
as she looked past the long rows of cots, on which rested the men in
blue, until her eyes found one on which lay, alone among his enemies, a
young Confederate officer.
The surgeon turned with her toward the man.
“Will he live?” she asked.
“Yes, only to be hung.”
“For what?” she cried.
“Sentenced by court-martial as a guerilla. It’s a lie, but there’s some
powerful hand back of it—some mysterious influence in high authority.
The boy wasn’t fully conscious at the trial.”
“We must appeal to Mr. Stanton.”
“As well appeal to the devil. They say the order came from his office.”
“A boy of nineteen!” she exclaimed. “It’s a shame. I’m looking for his
mother. You told me to telegraph to Richmond for her.”
“Yes, I’ll never forget his cries that night, so utterly pitiful and childlike.
I’ve heard many a cry of pain, but in all my life nothing so heartbreaking
as that boy in fevered delirium talking to his mother. His voice is one of
peculiar tenderness, penetrating and musical. It goes quivering into your
soul, and compels you to listen until you swear it’s your brother or
sweetheart or sister or mother calling you. You should have seen him
the day he fell. God of mercies, the pity and the glory of it!”
“Phil wrote me that he was a hero and asked me to look after him. Were
you there?”
“Yes, with the battery your brother was supporting. He was the colonel
of a shattered rebel regiment lying just in front of us before Petersburg.
Richmond was doomed, resistance was madness, but there they were,
ragged and half starved, a handful of men, not more than four hundred,
but their bayonets gleamed and flashed in the sunlight. In the face of a
murderous fire he charged and actually drove our men out of an
entrenchment. We concentrated our guns on him as he crouched behind
this earthwork. Our own men lay outside in scores, dead, dying, and
wounded. When the fire slacked, we could hear their cries for water.
“Suddenly this boy sprang on the breastwork. He was dressed in a new
gray colonel’s uniform that mother of his, in the pride of her soul, had
sent him.
“He was a handsome figure—tall, slender, straight, a gorgeous yellow
sash tasselled with gold around his waist, his sword flashing in the sun,
his slouch hat cocked on one side and an eagle’s feather in it.
“We thought he was going to lead another charge, but just as the battery
was making ready to fire he deliberately walked down the embankment
in a hail of musketry and began to give water to our wounded men.
“Every gun ceased firing, and we watched him. He walked back to the
trench, his naked sword flashed suddenly above that eagle’s feather, and
his grizzled ragamuffins sprang forward and charged us like so many
demons.
“There were not more than three hundred of them now, but on they
came, giving that hellish rebel yell at every jump—the cry of the hunter
from the hilltop at the sight of his game! All Southern men are hunters,
and that cry was transformed in war into something unearthly when it
came from a hundred throats in chorus and the game was human.
“Of course, it was madness. We blew them down that hill like chaff
before a hurricane. When the last man had staggered back or fallen, on
came this boy alone, carrying the colours he had snatched from a falling
soldier, as if he were leading a million men to victory.
“A bullet had blown his hat from his head, and we could see the blood
streaming down the side of his face. He charged straight into the jaws of
one of our guns. And then, with a smile on his lips and a dare to death
in his big brown eyes, he rammed that flag into the cannon’s mouth,
reeled, and fell! A cheer broke from our men.
“Your brother sprang forward and caught him in his arms, and as we
bent over the unconscious form, he exclaimed: ‘My God, doctor, look at
him! He is so much like me I feel as if I had been shot myself!’ They were
as much alike as twins—only his hair was darker. I tell you, Miss Elsie,
it’s a sin to kill men like that. One such man is worth more to this nation
than every negro that ever set his flat foot on this continent!”
The girl’s eyes had grown dim as she listened to the story.
“I will appeal to the President,” she said firmly.
“It’s the only chance. And just now he is under tremendous pressure.
His friendly order to the Virginia Legislature to return to Richmond,
Stanton forced him to cancel. A master hand has organized a conspiracy
in Congress to crush the President. They curse his policy of mercy as
imbecility, and swear to make the South a second Poland. Their
watchwords are vengeance and confiscation. Four fifths of his party in
Congress are in this plot. The President has less than a dozen real friends
in either House on whom he can depend. They say that Stanton is to be
given a free hand, and that the gallows will be busy. This cancelled
order of the President looks like it.”
“I’ll try my hand with Mr. Stanton,” she said with slow emphasis.
“Good luck, Little Sister—let me know if I can help,” the surgeon
answered cheerily as he passed on his round of work.
Elsie Stoneman took her seat beside the cot of the wounded Confederate
and began softly to sing and play.
A little farther along the same row a soldier was dying, a faint choking
just audible in his throat. An attendant sat beside him and would not
leave till the last. The ordinary chat and hum of the ward went on
indifferent to peace, victory, life, or death. Before the finality of the
hospital all other events of earth fade. Some were playing cards or
checkers, some laughing and joking, and others reading.
At the first soft note from the singer the games ceased, and the reader
put down his book.
The banjo had come to Washington with the negroes following the wake
of the army. She had laid aside her guitar and learned to play all the
stirring camp songs of the South. Her voice was low, soothing, and
tender. It held every silent listener in a spell.
As she played and sang the songs the wounded man loved, her eyes
lingered in pity on his sun-bronzed face, pinched and drawn with fever.
He was sleeping the stupid sleep that gives no rest. She could count the
irregular pounding of his heart in the throb of the big vein on his neck.
His lips were dry and burnt, and the little boyish moustache curled
upward from the row of white teeth as if scorched by the fiery breath.
He began to talk in flighty sentences, and she listened—his mother—his
sister—and yes, she was sure as she bent nearer—a little sweetheart who
lived next door. They all had sweethearts—these Southern boys. Again
he was teasing his dog—and then back in battle.
At length he opened his eyes, great dark-brown eyes, unnaturally bright,
with a strange yearning look in their depths as they rested on Elsie. He
tried to smile and feebly said:
“Here’s—a—fly—on—my—left—ear—my—guns—can’t—somehow—
reach—him—won’t—you—”
She sprang forward and brushed the fly away.
Again he opened his eyes.
“Excuse—me—for—asking—but am I alive?”
“Yes, indeed,” was the cheerful answer.
“Well, now, then, is this me, or is it not me, or has a cannon shot me, or
has the devil got me?”
“It’s you. The cannon didn’t shoot you, but three muskets did. The devil
hasn’t got you yet, but he will unless you’re good.”
“I’ll be good if you won’t leave me——”
Elsie turned her head away smiling, and he went on slowly:
“But I’m dead, I know. I’m sleeping on a cot with a canopy over it. I ain’t
hungry any more, and an angel has been hovering over me playing on a
harp of gold——”
“Only a little Yankee girl playing the banjo.”
“Can’t fool me—I’m in heaven.”
“You’re in the hospital.”
“Funny hospital—look at that harp and that big trumpet hanging close
by it—that’s Gabriel’s trumpet——”
“No,” she laughed. “This is the Patent Office building, that covers two
blocks, now a temporary hospital. There are seventy thousand wounded
soldiers in town, and more coming on every train. The thirty-five
hospitals are overcrowded.”
He closed his eyes a moment in silence, and then spoke with a feeble
tremor:
“I’m afraid you don’t know who I am—I can’t impose on you—I’m a
rebel——”
“Yes, I know. You are Colonel Ben Cameron. It makes no difference to
me now which side you fought on.”
“Well, I’m in heaven—been dead a long time. I can prove it, if you’ll
play again.”
“What shall I play?”
“First, ‘O Jonny Booker Help dis Nigger.’”
She played and sang it beautifully.
“Now, ‘Wake Up in the Morning.’”
Again he listened with wide, staring eyes that saw nothing except
visions within.
“Now, then, ‘The Ole Gray Hoss.’”
As the last notes died away he tried to smile again:
“One more—‘Hard Times an’ Wuss er Comin‘.’”
With deft, sure touch and soft negro dialect she sang it through.
“Now, didn’t I tell you that you couldn’t fool me? No Yankee girl could
play and sing these songs, I’m in heaven, and you’re an angel.”
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself to flirt with me, with one foot in the
grave?”
“That’s the time to get on good terms with the angels—but I’m done
dead——”
Elsie laughed in spite of herself.
“I know it,” he went on, “because you have shining golden hair and
amber eyes instead of blue ones. I never saw a girl in my life before with
such eyes and hair.”
“But you’re young yet.”
“Never—was—such—a—girl—on—earth—you’re—an——”
She lifted her finger in warning, and his eyelids drooped In exhausted
stupor.
“You musn’t talk any more,” she whispered, shaking her head.
A commotion at the door caused Elsie to turn from the cot. A sweet
motherly woman of fifty, in an old faded black dress, was pleading with
the guard to be allowed to pass.
“Can’t do it, m’um. It’s agin the rules.”
“But I must go in. I’ve tramped for four days through a wilderness of
hospitals, and I know he must be here.”
“Special orders, m’um—wounded rebels in here that belong in prison.”
“Very well, young man,” said the pleading voice. “My baby boy’s in this
place, wounded and about to die. I’m going in there. You can shoot me if
you like, or you can turn your head the other way.”
She stepped quickly past the soldier, who merely stared with dim eyes
out the door and saw nothing.
She stood for a moment with a look of helpless bewilderment. The vast
area of the second story of the great monolithic pile was crowded with
rows of sick, wounded, and dying men—a strange, solemn, and curious
sight. Against the walls were ponderous glass cases, filled with models
of every kind of invention the genius of man had dreamed. Between
these cases were deep lateral openings, eight feet wide, crowded with
the sick, and long rows of them were stretched through the centre of the
hall. A gallery ran around above the cases, and this was filled with cots.
The clatter of the feet of passing surgeons and nurses over the marble
floor added to the weird impression.
Elsie saw the look of helpless appeal in the mother’s face and hurried
forward to meet her:
“Is this Mrs. Cameron, of South Carolina?”
The trembling figure in black grasped her hand eagerly:
“Yes, yes, my dear, and I’m looking for my boy, who is wounded unto
death. Can you help me?”
“I thought I recognized you from a miniature I’ve seen,” she answered
softly. “I’ll lead you direct to his cot.”
“Thank you, thank you!” came the low reply.
In a moment she was beside him, and Elsie walked away to the open
window through which came the chirp of sparrows from the lilac bushes
in full bloom below.
The mother threw one look of infinite tenderness on the drawn face, and
her hands suddenly clasped in prayer:
“I thank Thee, Lord Jesus, for this hour! Thou hast heard the cry of my
soul and led my feet!” She gently knelt, kissed the hot lips, smoothed the
dark tangled hair back from his forehead, and her hand rested over his
eyes.
A faint flush tinged his face.
“It’s you, Mamma—I—know—you—that’s—your—hand—or—else—
it’s—God’s!”
She slipped her arms about him.
“My hero, my darling, my baby!”
“I’ll get well now, Mamma, never fear. You see, I had whipped them
that day as I had many a time before. I don’t know how it happened—
my men seemed all to go down at once. You know—I couldn’t surrender
in that new uniform of a colonel you sent me—we made a gallant fight,
and—now—I’m—just—a—little—tired—but you are here, and it’s all
right.”
“Yes, yes, dear. It’s all over now. General Lee has surrendered, and
when you are better I’ll take you home, where the sunshine and flowers
will give you strength again.”
“How’s my little sis?”
“Hunting in another part of the city for you. She’s grown so tall and
stately you’ll hardly know her. Your papa is at home, and don’t know
yet that you are wounded.”
“And my sweetheart, Marion Lenoir?”
“The most beautiful little girl in Piedmont—as sweet and mischievous as
ever. Mr. Lenoir is very ill, but he has written a glorious poem about one
of your charges. I’ll show it to you to-morrow. He is our greatest poet.
The South worships him. Marion sent her love to you and a kiss for the
young hero of Piedmont. I’ll give it to you now.”
She bent again and kissed him.
“And my dogs?”
“General Sherman left them, at least.”
“Well, I’m glad of that—my mare all right?”
“Yes, but we had a time to save her—Jake hid her in the woods till the
army passed.”
“Bully for Jake.”
“I don’t know what we should have done without him.”
“Old Aleck still at home and getting drunk as usual?”
“No, he ran away with the army and persuaded every negro on the
Lenoir place to go, except his wife, Aunt Cindy.”
“The old rascal, when Mrs. Lenoir’s mother saved him from burning to
death when he was a boy!”
“Yes, and he told the Yankees those fire scars were made with the lash,
and led a squad to the house one night to burn the barns. Jake headed
them off and told on him. The soldiers were so mad they strung him up
and thrashed him nearly to death. We haven’t seen him since.”
“Well, I’ll take care of you, Mamma, when I get home. Of course I’ll get
well. It’s absurd to die at nineteen. You know I never believed the bullet
had been moulded that could hit me. In three years of battle I lived a
charmed life and never got a scratch.”
His voice had grown feeble and laboured, and his face flushed. His
mother placed her hand on his lips.
“Just one more,” he pleaded feebly. “Did you see the little angel who has
been playing and singing for me? You must thank her.”
“Yes, I see her coming now. I must go and tell Margaret, and we will get
a pass and come every day.”
She kissed him, and went to meet Elsie.
“And you are the dear girl who has been playing and singing for my
boy, a wounded stranger here alone among his foes?”
“Yes, and for all the others, too.”
Mrs. Cameron seized both of her hands and looked at her tenderly.
“You will let me kiss you? I shall always love you.”
She pressed Elsie to her heart. In spite of the girl’s reserve, a sob caught
her breath at the touch of the warm lips. Her own mother had died
when she was a baby, and a shy, hungry heart, long hidden from the
world, leaped in tenderness and pain to meet that embrace.
Elsie walked with her to the door, wondering how the terrible truth of
her boy’s doom could be told.
She tried to speak, looked into Mrs. Cameron’s face, radiant with
grateful joy, and the words froze on her lips. She decided to walk a little
way with her. But the task became all the harder.
At the corner she stopped abruptly and bade her good-bye:
“I must leave you now, Mrs. Cameron. I will call for you in the morning
and help you secure the passes to enter the hospital.”
The mother stroked the girl’s hand and held it lingeringly.
“How good you are,” she said softly. “And you have not told me your
name?”
Elsie hesitated and said:
“That’s a little secret. They call me Sister Elsie, the Banjo Maid, in the
hospitals. My father is a man of distinction. I should be annoyed if my
full name were known. I’m Elsie Stoneman. My father is the leader of
the House. I live with my aunt.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, pressing her hand.
Elsie watched the dark figure disappear in the crowd with a strange
tumult of feeling.
The mention of her father had revived the suspicion that he was the
mysterious power threatening the policy of the President and planning a
reign of terror for the South. Next to the President, he was the most
powerful man in Washington, and the unrelenting foe of Mr. Lincoln,
although the leader of his party in Congress, which he ruled with a rod
of iron. He was a man of fierce and terrible resentments. And yet, in his
personal life, to those he knew, he was generous and considerate. “Old
Austin Stoneman, the Great Commoner,” he was called, and his name
was one to conjure with in the world of deeds. To this fair girl he was
the noblest Roman of them all, her ideal of greatness. He was an
indulgent father, and while not demonstrative, loved his children with
passionate devotion.
She paused and looked up at the huge marble columns that seemed each
a sentinel beckoning her to return within to the cot that held a wounded
foe. The twilight had deepened, and the soft light of the rising moon had
clothed the solemn majesty of the building with shimmering tenderness
and beauty.
“Why should I be distressed for one, an enemy, among these thousands
who have fallen?” she asked herself. Every detail of the scene she had
passed through with him and his mother stood out in her soul with
startling distinctness—and the horror of his doom cut with the deep
sense of personal anguish.
“He shall not die,” she said, with sudden resolution. “I’ll take his mother
to the President. He can’t resist her. I’ll send for Phil to help me.”
She hurried to the telegraph office and summoned her brother.
 CHAPTER II
THE GREAT HEART
The next morning, when Elsie reached the obscure boarding-house at
which Mrs. Cameron stopped, the mother had gone to the market to buy
a bunch of roses to place beside her boy’s cot.
As Elsie awaited her return, the practical little Yankee maid thought
with a pang of the tenderness and folly of such people. She knew this
mother had scarcely enough to eat, but to her bread was of small
importance, flowers necessary to life. After all, it was very sweet, this
foolishness of these Southern people, and it somehow made her
homesick.
“How can I tell her!” she sighed. “And yet I must.”
She had only waited a moment when Mrs. Cameron suddenly entered
with her daughter. She threw her flowers on the table, sprang forward to
meet Elsie, seized her hands and called to Margaret.
“How good of you to come so soon! This, Margaret, is our dear little
friend who has been so good to Ben and to me.”
Margaret took Elsie’s hand and longed to throw her arms around her
neck, but something in the quiet dignity of the Northern girl’s manner
held her back. She only smiled tenderly through her big dark eyes, and
softly said:
“We love you! Ben was my last brother. We were playmates and chums.
My heart broke when he ran away to the front. How can we thank you
and your brother!”
“I’m sure we’ve done nothing more than you would have done for us,”
said Elsie, as Mrs. Cameron left the room.
“Yes, I know, but we can never tell you how grateful we are to you. We
feel that you have saved Ben’s life and ours. The war has been one long
horror to us since my first brother was killed. But now it’s over, and we
have Ben left, and our hearts have been crying for joy all night.”
“I hoped my brother, Captain Phil Stoneman, would be here to-day to
meet you and help me, but he can’t reach Washington before Friday.”
“He caught Ben in his arms!” cried Margaret. “I know he’s brave, and
you must be proud of him.”
“Doctor Barnes says they are as much alike as twins—only Phil is not
quite so tall and has blond hair like mine.”
“You will let me see him and thank him the moment he comes?”
“Hurry, Margaret!” cheerily cried Mrs. Cameron, reëntering the parlour.
“Get ready; we must go at once to the hospital.”
Margaret turned and with stately grace hurried from the room. The old
dress she wore as unconscious of its shabbiness as though it were a royal
robe.
“And now, my dear, what must I do to get the passes?” asked the
mother eagerly.
Elsie’s warm amber eyes grew misty for a moment, and the fair skin
with its gorgeous rose tints of the North paled. She hesitated, tried to
speak, and was silent.
The sensitive soul of the Southern woman read the message of sorrow
words had not framed.
“Tell me, quickly! The doctor—has—not—concealed—his—true—
condition—from—me?”
“No, he is certain to recover.”
“What then?”
“Worse—he is condemned to death by court-martial.”
“Condemned to death—a—wounded—prisoner—of—war!” she
whispered slowly, with blanched face.
“Yes, he was accused of violating the rules of war as a guerilla raider in
the invasion of Pennsylvania.”
“Absurd and monstrous! He was on General Jeb Stuart’s staff and could
have acted only under his orders. He joined the infantry after Stuart’s
death, and rose to be a colonel, though but a boy. There’s some terrible
mistake!”
“Unless we can obtain his pardon,” Elsie went on in even, restrained
tones, “there is no hope. We must appeal to the President.”
The mother’s lips trembled, and she seemed about to faint.
“Could I see the President?” she asked, recovering herself with an effort.
“He has just reached Washington from the front, and is thronged by
thousands. It will be difficult.”
The mother’s lips were moving in silent prayer, and her eyes were
tightly closed to keep back the tears.
“Can you help me, dear?” she asked piteously.
“Yes,” was the quick response.
“You see,” she went on, “I feel so helpless. I have never been to the
White House or seen the President, and I don’t know how to go about
seeing him or how to ask him—and—I am afraid of Mr. Lincoln! I have
heard so many harsh things said of him.”
“I’ll do my best, Mrs. Cameron. We must go at once to the White House
and try to see him.”
The mother lifted the girl’s hand and stroked it gently.
“We will not tell Margaret. Poor child! she could not endure this. When
we return, we may have better news. It can’t be worse. I’ll send her on
an errand.”
She took up the bouquet of gorgeous roses with a sigh, buried her face in
the fresh perfume, as if to gain strength in their beauty and fragrance,
and left the room.
In a few moments she had returned and was on her way with Elsie to
the White House.
It was a beautiful spring morning, this eleventh day of April, 1865. The
glorious sunshine, the shimmering green of the grass, the warm breezes,
and the shouts of victory mocked the mother’s anguish.
At the White House gates they passed the blue sentry pacing silently
back and forth, who merely glanced at them with keen eyes and said
nothing. In the steady beat of his feet the mother could hear the tramp of
soldiers leading her boy to the place of death!
A great lump rose in her throat as she caught the first view of the
Executive Mansion gleaming white and silent and ghostlike among the
budding trees. The tall columns of the great facade, spotless as snow, the
spray of the fountain, the marble walls, pure, dazzling, and cold, seemed
to her the gateway to some great tomb in which her own dead and the
dead of all the people lay! To her the fair white palace, basking there in
the sunlight and budding grass, shrub, and tree, was the Judgment
House of Fate. She thought of all the weary feet that had climbed its
fateful steps in hope to return in despair, of its fierce dramas on which
the lives of millions had hung, and her heart grew sick.
A long line of people already stretched from the entrance under the
portico far out across the park, awaiting their turn to see the President.
Mrs. Cameron placed her hand falteringly on Elsie’s shoulder.
“Look, my dear, what a crowd already! Must we wait in line?”
“No, I can get you past the throng with my father’s name.”
“Will it be very difficult to reach the President?”
“No, it’s very easy. Guards and sentinels annoy him. He frets until they
are removed. An assassin or maniac could kill him almost any hour of
the day or night. The doors are open at all hours, very late at night. I
have often walked up to the rooms of his secretaries as late as nine
o’clock without being challenged by a soul.”
“What must I call him? Must I say ‘Your Excellency?’”
“By no means—he hates titles and forms. You should say ‘Mr. President’
in addressing him. But you will please him best if, in your sweet,
homelike way, you will just call him by his name. You can rely on his
sympathy. Read this letter of his to a widow. I brought it to show you.”
She handed Mrs. Cameron a newspaper clipping on which was printed
Mr. Lincoln’s letter to Mrs. Bixby, of Boston, who had lost five sons in
the war.
Over and over she read its sentences until they echoed as solemn music
in her soul:
“I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should
attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I
cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in
the thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly
Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you
only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride
that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of
freedom.
“Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
“ABRAHAM LINCOLN.”
“And the President paused amid a thousand cares to write that letter to
a broken-hearted woman?” the mother asked.
“Yes.”
“Then he is good down to the last secret depths of a great heart! Only a
Christian father could have written that letter. I shall not be afraid to
speak to him. And they told me he was an infidel!”
Elsie led her by a private way past the crowd and into the office of Major
Hay, the President’s private secretary. A word from the Great
Commoner’s daughter admitted them at once to the President’s room.
“Just take a seat on one side, Miss Elsie,” said Major Hay; “watch your
first opportunity and introduce your friend.”
On entering the room, Mrs. Cameron could not see the President, who
was seated at his desk surrounded by three men in deep consultation
over a mass of official documents.
She looked about the room nervously and felt reassured by its plain
aspect. It was a medium-sized, officelike place, with no signs of elegance
or ceremony. Mr. Lincoln was seated in an armchair beside a high
writing-desk and table combined. She noticed that his feet were large
and that they rested on a piece of simple straw matting. Around the
room were sofas and chairs covered with green worsted.
When the group about the chair parted a moment, she caught the first
glimpse of the man who held her life in the hollow of his hand. She
studied him with breathless interest. His back was still turned. Even
while seated, she saw that he was a man of enormous stature, fully six
feet four inches tall, legs and arms abnormally long, and huge broad
shoulders slightly stooped. His head was powerful and crowned with a
mass of heavy brown hair, tinged with silver.
He turned his head slightly and she saw his profile set in its short dark
beard—the broad intellectual brow, half covered by unmanageable hair,
his face marked with deep-cut lines of life and death, with great hollows
in the cheeks and under the eyes. In the lines which marked the corners
of his mouth she could see firmness, and his beetling brows and
unusually heavy eyelids looked stern and formidable. Her heart sank.
She looked again and saw goodness, tenderness, sorrow, canny
shrewdness, and a strange lurking smile all haunting his mouth and eye.
Suddenly he threw himself forward in his chair, wheeled and faced one
of his tormentors with a curious and comical expression. With one hand
patting the other, and a funny look overspreading his face, he said:
“My friend, let me tell you something——”
The man again stepped before him, and she could hear nothing. When
the story was finished, the man tried to laugh. It died in a feeble effort.
But the President laughed heartily, laughed all over, and laughed his
visitors out of the room.
Mrs. Cameron turned toward Elsie with a mute look of appeal to give
her this moment of good-humour in which to plead her cause, but
before she could move a man of military bearing suddenly stepped
before the President.
He began to speak, but seeing the look of stern decision in Mr. Lincoln’s
face, turned abruptly and said:
“Mr. President, I see you are fully determined not to do me justice!”
Mr. Lincoln slightly compressed his lips, rose quietly, seized the
intruder by the arm, and led him toward the door.
“This is the third time you have forced your presence on me, sir, asking
that I reverse the just sentence of a court-martial, dismissing you from
the service. I told you my decision was carefully made and was final.
Now I give you fair warning never to show yourself in this room again. I
can bear censure, but I will not endure insult!”
In whining tones the man begged for his papers he had dropped.
“Begone, sir,” said the President, as he thrust him through the door.
“Your papers will be sent to you.”
The poor mother trembled at this startling act and sank back limp in her
seat.
With quick, swinging stride the President walked back to his desk,
accompanied by Major Hay and a young German girl, whose simple
dress told that she was from the Western plains.
He handed the secretary an official paper.
“Give this pardon to the boy’s mother when she comes this morning,”
he said kindly to the secretary, his eyes suddenly full of gentleness.
“How could I consent to shoot a boy raised on a farm, in the habit of
going to bed at dark, for falling asleep at his post when required to
watch all night? I’ll never go into eternity with the blood of such a boy
on my skirts.”
Again the mother’s heart rose.
“You remember the young man I pardoned for a similar offence in ’62,
about which Stanton made such a fuss?” he went on in softly
reminiscent tones. “Well, here is that pardon.”
He drew from the lining of his silk hat a photograph, around which was
wrapped an executive pardon. Through the lower end of it was a bullet-
hole stained with blood.
“I got this in Richmond. They found him dead on the field. He fell in the
front ranks with my photograph in his pocket next to his heart, this
pardon wrapped around it, and on the back of it in his boy’s scrawl,
‘God bless Abraham Lincoln.’ I love to invest in bonds like that.”
The secretary returned to his room, the girl who was waiting stepped
forward, and the President rose to receive her.
The mother’s quick eye noted, with surprise, the simple dignity and
chivalry of manner with which he received this humble woman of the
people.
With straightforward eloquence the girl poured out her story, begging
for the pardon of her young brother who had been sentenced to death as
a deserter. He listened in silence.
How pathetic the deep melancholy of his sad face! Yes, she was sure, the
saddest face that God ever made in all the world! Her own stricken heart
for a moment went out to him in sympathy.
The President took off his spectacles, wiped his forehead with the large
red silk handkerchief he carried, and his eyes twinkled kindly down into
the good German face.
“You seem an honest, truthful, sweet girl,” he said, “and”—he smiled—
“you don’t wear hoop skirts! I may be whipped for this, but I’ll trust you
and your brother, too. He shall be pardoned.” Elsie rose to introduce
Mrs. Cameron, when a Congressman from Massachusetts suddenly
stepped before her and pressed for the pardon of a slave trader whose
ship had been confiscated. He had spent five years in prison, but could
not pay the heavy fine in money imposed.
The President had taken his seat again, and read the eloquent appeal for
mercy. He looked up over his spectacles, fixed his eyes piercingly on the
Congressman and said:
“This is a moving appeal, sir, expressed with great eloquence. I might
pardon a murderer under the spell of such words, but a man who can
make a business of going to Africa and robbing her of her helpless
children and selling them into bondage—no, sir—he may rot in jail
before he shall have liberty by any act of mine!”
Again the mother’s heart sank.
Her hour had come. She must put the issue of life or death to the test,
and as Elsie rose and stepped quickly forward, she followed; nerving
herself for the ordeal.
The President took Elsie’s hand familiarly and smiled without rising.
Evidently she was well known to him.
“Will you hear the prayer of a broken-hearted mother of the South, who
has lost four sons in General Lee’s army?” she asked.
Looking quietly past the girl, he caught sight, for the first time, of the
faded dress and the sorrow-shadowed face.
He was on his feet in a moment, extended his hand and led her to a
chair.
“Take this seat, Madam, and then tell me in your own way what I can do
for you.” In simple words, mighty with the eloquence of a mother’s
heart, she told her story and asked for the pardon of her boy, promising
his word of honour and her own that he would never again take up
arms against the Union.
“The war is over now, Mr. Lincoln,” she said, “and we have lost all. Can
you conceive the desolation of my heart? My four boys were noble men.
They may have been wrong, but they fought for what they believed to
be right. You, too, have lost a boy.”
The President’s eyes grew dim.
“Yes, a beautiful boy——” he said simply.
“Well, mine are all gone but this baby. One of them sleeps in an
unmarked grave at Gettysburg. One died in a Northern prison. One fell
at Chancellorsville, one in the Wilderness, and this, my baby, before
Petersburg. Perhaps I’ve loved him too much, this last one—he’s only a
child yet——”
“You shall have your boy, my dear Madam,” the President said simply,
seating himself and writing a brief order to the Secretary of War.
The mother drew near his desk, softly crying. Through her tears she
said:
“My heart is heavy, Mr. Lincoln, when I think of all the hard and bitter
things we have heard of you.”
“Well, give my love to the people of South Carolina when you go home,
and tell them that I am their President, and that I have never forgotten
this fact in the darkest hours of this awful war; and I am going to do
everything in my power to help them.” “You will never regret this
generous act,” the mother cried with gratitude.
“I reckon not,” he answered. “I’ll tell you something, Madam, if you
won’t tell anybody. It’s a secret of my administration. I’m only too glad
of an excuse to save a life when I can. Every drop of blood shed in this
war North and South has been as if it were wrung out of my heart. A
strange fate decreed that the bloodiest war in human history should be
fought under my direction. And I—to whom the sight of blood is a
sickening horror—I have been compelled to look on in silent anguish
because I could not stop it! Now that the Union is saved, not another
drop of blood shall be spilled if I can prevent it.”
“May God bless you!” the mother cried, as she received from him the
order.
She held his hand an instant as she took her leave, laughing and sobbing
in her great joy.
“I must tell you, Mr. President,” she said, “how surprised and how
pleased I am to find you are a Southern man.”
“Why, didn’t you know that my parents were Virginians, and that I was
born in Kentucky?”
“Very few people in the South know it. I am ashamed to say I did not.”
“Then, how did you know I am a Southerner?”
“By your looks, your manner of speech, your easy, kindly ways, your
tenderness and humour, your firmness in the right as you see it, and,
above all, the way you rose and bowed to a woman in an old, faded
black dress, whom you knew to be an enemy.” “No, Madam, not an
enemy now,” he said softly. “That word is out of date.”
“If we had only known you in time——”
The President accompanied her to the door with a deference of manner
that showed he had been deeply touched.
“Take this letter to Mr. Stanton at once,” he said. “Some folks complain
of my pardons, but it rests me after a hard day’s work if I can save some
poor boy’s life. I go to bed happy, thinking of the joy I have given to
those who love him.”
As the last words were spoken, a peculiar dreaminess of expression stole
over his careworn face, as if a throng of gracious memories had lifted for
a moment the burden of his life.
 CHAPTER III
THE MAN OF WAR
Elsie led Mrs. Cameron direct from the White House to the War
Department.
“Well, Mrs. Cameron, what did you think of the President?” she asked.
“I hardly know,” was the thoughtful answer. “He is the greatest man I
ever met. One feels this instinctively.”
When Mrs. Cameron was ushered into the Secretary’s Office, Mr.
Stanton was seated at his desk writing.
She handed the order of the President to a clerk, who gave it to the
Secretary.
He was a man in the full prime of life, intellectual and physical, low and
heavy set, about five feet eight inches in height and inclined to fat. His
movements, however, were quick, and as he swung in his chair the
keenest vigour marked every movement of body and every change of
his countenance.
His face was swarthy and covered with a long, dark beard touched with
gray. He turned a pair of little black piercing eyes on her and without
rising said:
“So you are the woman who has a wounded son under sentence of
death as a guerilla?”
“I am so unfortunate,” she answered.
“Well, I have nothing to say to you,” he went on in a louder and sterner
tone, “and no time to waste on you. If you have raised up men to rebel
against the best government under the sun, you can take the
consequences——”
“But, my dear sir,” broke in the mother, “he is a mere boy of nineteen,
who ran away three years ago and entered the service——”
“I don’t want to hear another word from you!” he yelled in rage. “I have
no time to waste—go at once. I’ll do nothing for you.”
“But I bring you an order from the President,” protested the mother.
“Yes, I know it,” he answered with a sneer, “and I’ll do with it what I’ve
done with many others—see that it is not executed—now go.”
“But the President told me you would give me a pass to the hospital,
and that a full pardon would be issued to my boy!”
“Yes, I see. But let me give you some information. The President is a
fool—a d—— fool! Now, will you go?”
With a sinking sense of horror, Mrs. Cameron withdrew and reported to
Elsie the unexpected encounter.
“The brute!” cried the girl. “We’ll go back immediately and report this
insult to the President.”
“Why are such men intrusted with power?” the mother sighed.
“It’s a mystery to me, I’m sure. They say he is the greatest Secretary of
War in our history. I don’t believe it. Phil hates the sight of him, and so
does every army officer I know, from General Grant down. I hope Mr.
Lincoln will expel him from the Cabinet for this insult.”
When, they were again ushered into the President’s office, Elsie
hastened to inform him of the outrageous reply the Secretary of War had
made to his order.
“Did Stanton say that I was a fool?” he asked, with a quizzical look out
of his kindly eyes.
“Yes, he did,” snapped Elsie. “And he repeated it with a blankety
prefix.”
The President looked good-humouredly out of the window toward the
War Office and musingly said:
“Well, if Stanton says that I am a blankety fool, it must be so, for I have
found out that he is nearly always right, and generally means what he
says. I’ll just step over and see Stanton.”
As he spoke the last sentence, the humour slowly faded from his face,
and the anxious mother saw back of those patient gray eyes the sudden
gleam of the courage and conscious power of a lion.
He dismissed them with instructions to return the next day for his final
orders and walked over to the War Department alone.
The Secretary of War was in one of his ugliest moods, and made no
effort to conceal it when asked his reasons for the refusal to execute the
order.
“The grounds for my action are very simple,” he said with bitter
emphasis. “The execution of this traitor is part of a carefully considered
policy of justice on which the future security of the Nation depends. If I
am to administer this office, I will not be hamstrung by constant
Executive interference. Besides, in this particular case, I was urged that
justice be promptly executed by the most powerful man in Congress. I
advise you to avoid a quarrel with old Stoneman at this crisis in our
history.”
The President sat on a sofa with his legs crossed, relapsed into an
attitude of resignation, and listened in silence until the last sentence,
when suddenly he sat bolt upright, fixed his deep gray eyes intently on
Stanton and said:
“Mr. Secretary, I reckon you will have to execute that order.”
“I cannot do it,” came the firm answer. “It is an interference with justice,
and I will not execute it.”
Mr. Lincoln held his eyes steadily on Stanton and slowly said:
“Mr. Secretary, it will have to be done.”
Stanton wheeled in his chair, seized a pen and wrote very rapidly a few
lines to which he fixed his signature. He rose with the paper in his hand,
walked to his chief, and with deep emotion said:
“Mr. President, I wish to thank you for your constant friendship during
the trying years I have held this office. The war is ended, and my work is
done. I hand you my resignation.”
Mr. Lincoln’s lips came suddenly together, he slowly rose, and looked
down with surprise into the flushed angry face.
He took the paper, tore it into pieces, slipped one of his long arms
around the Secretary, and said in low accents:
“Stanton, you have been a faithful public servant, and it is not for you to
say when you will no longer be needed. Go on with your work. I will
have my way in this matter; but I will attend to it personally.”
Stanton resumed his seat, and the President returned to the White
House.
 CHAPTER IV
A CLASH OF GIANTS
Elsie secured from the Surgeon-General temporary passes for the day,
and sent her friends to the hospital with the promise that she would not
leave the White House until she had secured the pardon.
The President greeted her with unusual warmth. The smile that had
only haunted his sad face during four years of struggle, defeat, and
uncertainty had now burst into joy that made his powerful head radiate
light. Victory had lifted the veil from his soul, and he was girding
himself for the task of healing the Nation’s wounds.
“I’ll have it ready for you in a moment, Miss Elsie,” he said, touching
with his sinewy hand a paper which lay on his desk, bearing on its face
the red seal of the Republic. “I am only waiting to receive the passes.”
“I am very grateful to you, Mr. President,” the girl said feelingly.
“But tell me,” he said, with quaint, fatherly humour, “why you, of all
our girls, the brightest, fiercest little Yankee in town, so take to heart a
rebel boy’s sorrows?”
Elsie blushed, and then looked at him frankly with a saucy smile.
“I am fulfilling the Commandments.”
“Love your enemies?”
“Certainly. How could one help loving the sweet, motherly face you saw
yesterday.”
The President laughed heartily. “I see—of course, of course!”
“The Honourable Austin Stoneman,” suddenly announced a clerk at his
elbow.
Elsie started in surprise and whispered:
“Do not let my father know I am here. I will wait in the next room.
You’ll let nothing delay the pardon, will you, Mr. President?”
Mr. Lincoln warmly pressed her hand as she disappeared through the
door leading into Major Hay’s room, and turned to meet the Great
Commoner who hobbled slowly in, leaning on his crooked cane.
At this moment he was a startling and portentous figure in the drama of
the Nation, the most powerful parliamentary leader in American
history, not excepting Henry Clay.
No stranger ever passed this man without a second look. His clean-
shaven face, the massive chiselled features, his grim eagle look, and
cold, colourless eyes, with the frosts of his native Vermont sparkling in
their depths, compelled attention.
His walk was a painful hobble. He was lame in both feet, and one of
them was deformed. The left leg ended in a mere bunch of flesh,
resembling more closely an elephant’s hoof than the foot of a man.
He was absolutely bald, and wore a heavy brown wig that seemed too
small to reach the edge of his enormous forehead.
He rarely visited the White House. He was the able, bold, unscrupulous
leader of leaders, and men came to see him. He rarely smiled, and when
he did it was the smile of the cynic and misanthrope. His tongue had the
lash of a scorpion. He was a greater terror to the trimmers and time-
servers of his own party than to his political foes. He had hated the
President with sullen, consistent, and unyielding venom from his first
nomination at Chicago down to the last rumour of his new
proclamation.
In temperament a fanatic, in impulse a born revolutionist, the word
conservatism was to him as a red rag to a bull. The first clash of arms
was music to his soul. He laughed at the call for 75,000 volunteers, and
demanded the immediate equipment of an army of a million men. He
saw it grow to 2,000,000. From the first, his eagle eye had seen the end
and all the long, blood-marked way between. And from the first, he
began to plot the most cruel and awful vengeance in human history.
And now his time had come.
The giant figure in the White House alone had dared to brook his anger
and block the way; for old Stoneman was the Congress of the United
States. The opposition was too weak even for his contempt. Cool,
deliberate, and venomous alike in victory or defeat, the fascination of his
positive faith and revolutionary programme had drawn the rank and file
of his party in Congress to him as charmed satellites.
The President greeted him cordially, and with his habitual deference to
age and physical infirmity hastened to place for him an easy chair near
his desk.
He was breathing heavily and evidently labouring under great emotion.
He brought his cane to the floor with violence, placed both hands on its
crook, leaned his massive jaws on his hands for a moment, and then
said:
“Mr. President, I have not annoyed you with many requests during the
past four years, nor am I here to-day to ask any favours. I have come to
warn you that, in the course you have mapped out, the executive and
legislative branches have come to the parting of the ways, and that your
encroachments on the functions of Congress will be tolerated, now that
the Rebellion is crushed, not for a single moment!”
Mr. Lincoln listened with dignity, and a ripple of fun played about his
eyes as he looked at his grim visitor. The two men were face to face at
last—the two men above all others who had built and were to build the
foundations of the New Nation—Lincoln’s in love and wisdom to
endure forever, the Great Commoner’s in hate and madness, to bear its
harvest of tragedy and death for generations yet unborn.
“Well, now, Stoneman,” began the good-humoured voice, “that puts me
in mind——”
The old Commoner lifted his hand with a gesture of angry impatience:
“Save your fables for fools. Is it true that you have prepared a
proclamation restoring the conquered province of North Carolina to its
place as a State in the Union with no provision for negro suffrage or the
exile and disfranchisement of its rebels?”
The President rose and walked back and forth with his hands folded
behind him before answering.
“I have. The Constitution grants to the National Government no power
to regulate suffrage, and makes no provision for the control of
‘conquered provinces.’”
“Constitution!” thundered Stoneman. “I have a hundred constitutions in
the pigeonholes of my desk!”
“I have sworn to support but one.”
“A worn-out rag——”
“Rag or silk, I’ve sworn to execute it, and I’ll do it, so help me God!” said
the quiet voice.
“You’ve been doing it for the past four years, haven’t you!” sneered the
Commoner. “What right had you under the Constitution to declare war
against a ‘sovereign’ State? To invade one for coercion? To blockade a
port? To declare slaves free? To suspend the writ of habeas corpus? To
create the State of West Virginia by the consent of two states, one of
which was dead, and the other one of which lived in Ohio? By what
authority have you appointed military governors in the ‘sovereign’
States of Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana? Why trim the hedge and
lie about it? We, too, are revolutionists, and you are our executive. The
Constitution sustained and protected slavery. It was ‘a league with
death and a covenant with hell,’ and our flag ‘a polluted rag!’”
“In the stress of war,” said the President, with a far-away look, “it was
necessary that I do things as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and
Navy to save the Union which I have no right to do now that the Union
is saved and its Constitution preserved. My first duty is to re-establish
the Constitution as our supreme law over every inch of our soil.”
“The Constitution be d——d!” hissed the old man. “It was the creation,
both in letter and spirit, of the slaveholders of the South.”
“Then the world is their debtor, and their work is a monument of
imperishable glory to them and to their children. I have sworn to
preserve it!”
“We have outgrown the swaddling clothes of a babe. We will make new
constitutions!”
“‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,’” softly spoke the tall, self-
contained man.
For the first time the old leader winced. He had long ago exhausted the
vocabulary of contempt on the President, his character, ability, and
policy. He felt as a shock the first impression of supreme authority with
which he spoke. The man he had despised had grown into the great
constructive statesman who would dispute with him every inch of
ground in the attainment of his sinister life purpose.
His hatred grew more intense as he realized the prestige and power with
which he was clothed by his mighty office.
With an effort he restrained his anger, and assumed an argumentative
tone.
“Can’t you see that your so-called States are now but conquered
provinces? That North Carolina and other waste territories of the United
States are unfit to associate with civilized communities?”
“We fought no war of conquest,” quietly urged the President, “but one
of self-preservation as an indissoluble Union. No State ever got out of it,
by the grace of God and the power of our arms. Now that we have won,
and established for all time its unity, shall we stultify ourselves by
declaring we were wrong? These States must be immediately restored to
their rights, or we shall betray the blood we have shed. There are no
‘conquered provinces’ for us to spoil. A nation cannot make conquest of
its own territory.”
“But we are acting outside the Constitution,” interrupted Stoneman.
“Congress has no existence outside the Constitution,” was the quick
answer.
The old Commoner scowled, and his beetling brows hid for a moment
his eyes. His keen intellect was catching its first glimpse of the
intellectual grandeur of the man with whom he was grappling. The
facility with which he could see all sides of a question, and the vivid
imagination which lit his mental processes, were a revelation. We
always underestimate the men we despise.
“Why not out with it?” cried Stoneman, suddenly changing his tack.
“You are determined to oppose negro suffrage?”
“I have suggested to Governor Hahn of Louisiana to consider the policy
of admitting the more intelligent and those who served in the war. It is
only a suggestion. The State alone has the power to confer the ballot.”
“But the truth is this little ‘suggestion’ of yours is only a bone thrown to
radical dogs to satisfy our howlings for the moment! In your soul of
souls you don’t believe in the equality of man if the man under
comparison be a negro?”
“I believe that there is a physical difference between the white and black
races which will forever forbid their living together on terms of political
and social equality. If such be attempted, one must go to the wall.”
“Very well, pin the Southern white man to the wall. Our party and the
Nation will then be safe.”
“That is to say, destroy African slavery and establish white slavery
under negro masters! That would be progress with a vengeance.”
A grim smile twitched the old man’s lips as he said:
“Yes, your prim conservative snobs and male waiting-maids in Congress
went into hysterics when I armed the negroes. Yet the heavens have not
fallen.”
“True. Yet no more insane blunder could now be made than any further
attempt to use these negro troops. There can be no such thing as
restoring this Union to its basis of fraternal peace with armed negroes,
wearing the uniform of this Nation, tramping over the South, and
rousing the basest passions of the freedmen and their former masters.
General Butler, their old commander, is now making plans for their
removal, at my request. He expects to dig the Panama Canal with these
black troops.”
“Fine scheme that—on a par with your messages to Congress asking for
the colonization of the whole negro race!”
“It will come to that ultimately,” said the President firmly. “The negro
has cost us $5,000,000,000, the desolation of ten great States, and rivers of
blood. We can well afford a few million dollars more to effect a
permanent settlement of the issue. This is the only policy on which
Seward and I have differed——”
“Then Seward was not an utterly hopeless fool. I’m glad to hear
something to his credit,” growled the old Commoner.
“I have urged the colonization of the negroes, and I shall continue until
it is accomplished. My emancipation proclamation was linked with this
plan. Thousands of them have lived in the North for a hundred years,
yet not one is the pastor of a white church, a judge, a governor, a mayor,
or a college president. There is no room for two distinct races of white
men in America, much less for two distinct races of whites and blacks.
We can have no inferior servile class, peon or peasant. We must
assimilate or expel. The American is a citizen king or nothing. I can
conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the negro into
our social and political life as our equal. A mulatto citizenship would be
too dear a price to pay even for emancipation.”
“Words have no power to express my loathing for such twaddle!” cried
Stoneman, snapping his great jaws together and pursing his lips with
contempt.
“If the negro were not here would we allow him to land?” the President
went on, as if talking to himself. “The duty to exclude carries the right to
expel. Within twenty years we can peacefully colonize the negro in the
tropics, and give him our language, literature, religion, and system of
government under conditions in which he can rise to the full measure of
manhood. This he can never do here. It was the fear of the black tragedy
behind emancipation that led the South into the insanity of secession.
We can never attain the ideal Union our fathers dreamed, with millions
of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither
possible nor desirable. The Nation cannot now exist half white and half
black, any more than it could exist half slave and half free.”
“Yet ‘God hath made of one blood all races,’” quoted the cynic with a
sneer.
“Yes—but finish the sentence—‘and fixed the bounds of their
habitation.’ God never meant that the negro should leave his habitat or
the white man invade his home. Our violation of this law is written in
two centuries of shame and blood. And the tragedy will not be closed
until the black man is restored to his home.”
“I marvel that the minions of slavery elected Jeff Davis their chief with
so much better material at hand!”
“His election was a tragic and superfluous blunder. I am the President of
the United States, North and South,” was the firm reply.
“Particularly the South!” hissed Stoneman. “During all this hideous war
they have been your pets—these rebel savages who have been
murdering our sons. You have been the ever-ready champion of traitors.
And you now dare to bend this high office to their defence——”
“My God, Stoneman, are you a man or a savage!” cried the President. “Is
not the North equally responsible for slavery? Has not the South lost all?
Have not the Southern people paid the full penalty of all the crimes of
war? Are our skirts free? Was Sherman’s march a picnic? This war has
been a giant conflict of principles to decide whether we are a bundle of
petty sovereignties held by a rope of sand or a mighty nation of freemen.
But for the loyalty of four border Southern States—but for Farragut and
Thomas and their two hundred thousand heroic Southern brethren who
fought for the Union against their own flesh and blood, we should have
lost. You cannot indict a people——”
“I do indict them!” muttered the old man.
“Surely,” went on the even, throbbing voice, “surely, the vastness of this
war, its titanic battles, its heroism, its sublime earnestness, should sink
into oblivion all low schemes of vengeance! Before the sheer grandeur of
its history our children will walk with silent lips and uncovered heads.”
“And forget the prison pen at Andersonville!”
“Yes. We refused, as a policy of war, to exchange those prisoners,
blockaded their ports, made medicine contraband, and brought the
Southern Army itself to starvation. The prison records, when made at
last for history, will show as many deaths on our side as on theirs.”
“The murderer on the gallows always wins more sympathy than his
forgotten victim,” interrupted the cynic.
“The sin of vengeance is an easy one under the subtle plea of justice,”
said the sorrowful voice. “Have we not had enough bloodshed? Is not
God’s vengeance enough? When Sherman’s army swept to the sea,
before him lay the Garden of Eden, behind him stretched a desert! A
hundred years cannot give back to the wasted South her wealth, or two
hundred years restore to her the lost seed treasures of her young
manhood——”
“The imbecility of a policy of mercy in this crisis can only mean the reign
of treason and violence,” persisted the old man, ignoring the President’s
words.
“I leave my policy before the judgment bar of time, content with its
verdict. In my place, radicalism would have driven the border States
into the Confederacy, every Southern man back to his kinsmen, and
divided the North itself into civil conflict. I have sought to guide and
control public opinion into the ways on which depended our life. This
rational flexibility of policy you and your fellow radicals have been
pleased to call my vacillating imbecility.”
“And what is your message for the South?”
“Simply this: ‘Abolish slavery, come back home, and behave yourself.’
Lee surrendered to our offers of peace and amnesty. In my last message
to Congress I told the Southern people they could have peace at any
moment by simply laying down their arms and submitting to National
authority. Now that they have taken me at my word, shall I betray them
by an ignoble revenge? Vengeance cannot heal and purify: it can only
brutalize and destroy.”
Stoneman shuffled to his feet with impatience.
“I see it is useless to argue with you. I’ll not waste my breath. I give you
an ultimatum. The South is conquered soil. I mean to blot it from the
map. Rather than admit one traitor to the halls of Congress from these
so-called States I will shatter the Union itself into ten thousand
fragments! I will not sit beside men whose clothes smell of the blood of
my kindred. At least dry them before they come in. Four years ago, with
yells and curses, these traitors left the halls of Congress to join the
armies of Catiline. Shall they return to rule?”
“I repeat,” said the President, “you cannot indict a people. Treason is an
easy word to speak. A traitor is one who fights and loses. Washington
was a traitor to George III. Treason won, and Washington is immortal.
Treason is a word that victors hurl at those who fail.”
“Listen to me,” Stoneman interrupted with vehemence. “The life of our
party demands that the negro be given the ballot and made the ruler of
the South. This can be done only by the extermination of its landed
aristocracy, that their mothers shall not breed another race of traitors.
This is not vengeance. It is justice, it is patriotism, it is the highest
wisdom and humanity. Nature, at times, blots out whole communities
and races that obstruct progress. Such is the political genius of these
people that, unless you make the negro the ruler, the South will yet
reconquer the North and undo the work of this war.”
“If the South in poverty and ruin can do this, we deserve to be ruled!
The North is rich and powerful—the South a land of wreck and tomb. I
greet with wonder, shame, and scorn such ignoble fear! The Nation
cannot be healed until the South is healed. Let the gulf be closed in
which we bury slavery, sectional animosity, and all strifes and hatreds.
The good sense of our people will never consent to your scheme of
insane vengeance.”
“The people have no sense. A new fool is born every second. They are
ruled by impulse and passion.”
“I have trusted them before, and they have not failed me. The day I left
for Gettysburg to dedicate the battlefield, you were so sure of my defeat
in the approaching convention that you shouted across the street to a
friend as I passed: ‘Let the dead bury the dead!’ It was a brilliant sally of
wit. I laughed at it myself. And yet the people unanimously called me
again to lead them to victory.”
“Yes, in the past,” said Stoneman bitterly, “you have triumphed, but
mark my word: from this hour your star grows dim. The slumbering
fires of passion will be kindled. In the fight we join to-day I’ll break your
back and wring the neck of every dastard and time-server who fawns at
your feet.”
The President broke into a laugh that only increased the old man’s
wrath.
“I protest against the insult of your buffoonery!”
“Excuse me, Stoneman; I have to laugh or die beneath the burdens I
bear, surrounded by such supporters!”
“Mark my word,” growled the old leader, “from the moment you
publish that North Carolina proclamation, your name will be a by-word
in Congress.”
“There are higher powers.”
“You will need them.”
“I’ll have help,” was the calm reply, as the dreaminess of the poet and
mystic stole over the rugged face. “I would be a presumptuous fool,
indeed, if I thought that for a day I could discharge the duties of this
great office without the aid of One who is wiser and stronger than all
others.”
“You’ll need the help of Almighty God in the course you’ve mapped
out!”
“Some ships come into port that are not steered,” went on the dreamy
voice. “Suppose Pickett had charged one hour earlier at Gettysburg?
Suppose the Monitor had arrived one hour later at Hampton Roads? I
had a dream last night that always presages great events. I saw a white
ship passing swiftly under full sail. I have often seen her before. I have
never known her port of entry, or her destination, but I have always
known her Pilot!”
The cynic’s lips curled with scorn. He leaned heavily on his cane, and
took a shambling step toward the door.
“You refuse to heed the wishes of Congress?”
“If your words voice them, yes. Force your scheme of revenge on the
South, and you sow the wind to reap the whirlwind.”
“Indeed! and from what secret cave will this whirlwind come?”
“The despair of a mighty race of world-conquering men, even in defeat,
is still a force that statesmen reckon with.”
“I defy them,” growled the old Commoner.
Again the dreamy look returned to Lincoln’s face, and he spoke as if
repeating a message of the soul caught in the clouds in an hour of
transfiguration:
“And I’ll trust the honour of Lee and his people. The mystic chords of
memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every
living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the
chorus of the Union, when touched again, as they surely will be, by the
better angels of our nature.”
“You’ll be lucky to live to hear that chorus.”
“To dream it is enough. If I fall by the hand of an assassin now, he will
not come from the South. I was safer in Richmond, this week, than I am
in Washington, to-day.”
The cynic grunted and shuffled another step toward the door.
The President came closer.
“Look here, Stoneman; have you some deep personal motive in this
vengeance on the South? Come, now, I’ve never in my life known you to
tell a lie.”
The answer was silence and a scowl.
“Am I right?”
“Yes and no. I hate the South because I hate the Satanic Institution of
Slavery with consuming fury. It has long ago rotted the heart out of the
Southern people. Humanity cannot live in its tainted air, and its children
are doomed. If my personal wrongs have ordained me for a mighty task,
no matter; I am simply the chosen instrument of Justice!”
Again the mystic light clothed the rugged face, calm and patient as
Destiny, as the President slowly repeated:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right, as God gives me to see the right, I shall strive to finish the work
we are in, and bind up the Nation’s wounds.”
“I’ve given you fair warning,” cried the old Commoner, trembling with
rage, as he hobbled nearer the door. “From this hour your
administration is doomed.”
“Stoneman,” said the kindly voice, “I can’t tell you how your venomous
philanthropy sickens me. You have misunderstood and abused me at
every step during the past four years. I bear you no ill will. If I have said
anything to-day to hurt your feelings, forgive me. The earnestness with
which you pressed the war was an invaluable service to me and to the
Nation. I’d rather work with you than fight you. But now that we have
to fight, I’d as well tell you I’m not afraid of you. I’ll suffer my right arm
to be severed from my body before I’ll sign one measure of ignoble
revenge on a brave, fallen foe, and I’ll keep up this fight until I win, die,
or my country forsakes me.”
“I have always known you had a sneaking admiration for the South,”
came the sullen sneer.
“I love the South! It is a part of this Union. I love every foot of its soil,
every hill and valley, mountain, lake, and sea, and every man, woman,
and child that breathes beneath its skies. I am an American.”
As the burning words leaped from the heart of the President the broad
shoulders of his tall form lifted, and his massive head rose in
unconscious heroic pose.
“I marvel that you ever made war upon your loved ones!” cried the
cynic.
“We fought the South because we loved her and would not let her go.
Now that she is crushed and lies bleeding at our feet—you shall not
make war on the wounded, dying, and the dead!”
Again the lion gleamed in the calm gray eyes.
 CHAPTER V
THE BATTLE OF LOVE
Elsie carried Ben Cameron’s pardon to the anxious mother and sister
with her mind in a tumult. The name on these fateful papers fascinated
her. She read it again and again with a curious personal joy that she had
saved a life!
She had entered on her work among the hospitals a bitter partisan of her
father’s school, with the simple idea that all Southerners were savage
brutes. Yet as she had seen the wounded boys from the South among the
men in blue, more and more she had forgotten the difference between
them. They were so young, these slender, dark-haired ones from Dixie—
so pitifully young! Some of them were only fifteen, and hundreds not
over sixteen. A lad of fourteen she had kissed one day in sheer agony of
pity for his loneliness.
The part her father was playing in the drama on which Ben Cameron’s
life had hung puzzled her. Was his the mysterious arm back of Stanton?
Echoes of the fierce struggle with the President had floated through the
half-open door.
She had implicit faith in her father’s patriotism and pride in his giant
intellect. She knew that he was a king among men by divine right of
inherent power. His sensitive spirit, brooding over a pitiful lameness,
had hidden from the world behind a frowning brow like a wounded
animal. Yet her hand in hours of love, when no eye save God’s could
see, had led his great soul out of its dark lair. She loved him with
brooding tenderness, knowing that she had gotten closer to his inner life
than any other human being—closer than her own mother, who had
died while she was a babe. Her aunt, with whom she and Phil now
lived, had told her the mother’s life was not a happy one. Their natures
had not proved congenial, and her gentle Quaker spirit had died of grief
in the quiet home in southern Pennsylvania.
Yet there were times when he was a stranger even to her. Some secret,
dark and cold, stood between them. Once she had tenderly asked him
what it meant. He merely pressed her hand, smiled wearily, and said:
“Nothing, my dear, only the Blue Devils after me again.”
He had always lived in Washington in a little house with black shutters,
near the Capitol, while the children had lived with his sister, near the
White House, where they had grown from babyhood.
A curious fact about this place on the Capitol hill was that his
housekeeper, Lydia Brown, was a mulatto, a woman of extraordinary
animal beauty and the fiery temper of a leopardess. Elsie had ventured
there once and got such a welcome she would never return. All sorts of
gossip could be heard in Washington about this woman, her jewels, her
dresses, her airs, her assumption of the dignity of the presiding genius of
National legislation and her domination of the old Commoner and his
life. It gradually crept into the newspapers and magazines, but he never
once condescended to notice it.
Elsie begged her father to close this house and live with them.
His reply was short and emphatic:
“Impossible, my child. This club foot must live next door to the Capitol.
My house is simply an executive office at which I sleep. Half the
business of the Nation is transacted there. Don’t mention this subject
again.”
Elsie choked back a sob at the cold menace in the tones of this command,
and never repeated her request. It was the only wish he had ever denied
her, and, somehow, her heart would come back to it with persistence
and brood and wonder over his motive.
The nearer she drew, this morning, to the hospital door, the closer the
wounded boy’s life and loved ones seemed to hers. She thought with
anguish of the storm about to break between her father and the
President—the one demanding the desolation of their land, wasted,
harried, and unarmed!—the President firm in his policy of mercy,
generosity, and healing.
Her father would not mince words. His scorpion tongue, set on fires of
hell, might start a conflagration that would light the Nation with its
glare. Would not his name be a terror for every man and woman born
under Southern skies? The sickening feeling stole over her that he was
wrong, and his policy cruel and unjust.
She had never before admired the President. It was fashionable to speak
with contempt of him in Washington. He had little following in
Congress. Nine tenths of the politicians hated or feared him, and she
knew her father had been the soul of a conspiracy at the Capitol to
prevent his second nomination and create a dictatorship, under which to
carry out an iron policy of reconstruction in the South. And now she
found herself heart and soul the champion of the President.
She was ashamed of her disloyalty, and felt a rush of impetuous anger
against Ben and his people for thrusting themselves between her and her
own. Yet how absurd to feel thus against the innocent victims of a great
tragedy! She put the thought from her. Still she must part from them
now before the brewing storm burst. It would be best for her and best
for them. This pardon delivered would end their relations. She would
send the papers by a messenger and not see them again. And then she
thought with a throb of girlish pride of the hour to come in the future
when Ben’s big brown eyes would be softened with a tear when he
would learn that she had saved his life. They had concealed all from him
as yet.
She was afraid to question too closely in her own heart the shadowy
motive that lay back of her joy. She read again with a lingering smile the
name “Ben Cameron” on the paper with its big red Seal of Life. She had
laughed at boys who had made love to her, dreaming a wider, nobler
life of heroic service. And she felt that she was fulfilling her ideal in the
generous hand she had extended to these who were friendless. Were
they not the children of her soul in that larger, finer world of which she
had dreamed and sung? Why should she give them up now for brutal
politics? Their sorrow had been hers, their joy should be hers, too. She
would take the papers herself and then say good-bye.
She found the mother and sister beside the cot. Ben was sleeping with
Margaret holding one of his hands. The mother was busy sewing for the
wounded Confederate boys she had found scattered through the
hospital.
At the sight of Elsie holding aloft the message of life she sprang to meet
her with a cry of joy.
She clasped the girl to her breast, unable to speak. At last she released
her and said with a sob:
“My child, through good report and through evil report my love will
enfold you!”
Elsie stammered, looked away, and tried to hide her emotion. Margaret
had knelt and bowed her head on Ben’s cot. She rose at length, threw her
arms around Elsie in a resistless impulse, kissed her and whispered:
“My sweet sister!”
Elsie’s heart leaped at the words, as her eyes rested on the face of the
sleeping soldier.
 CHAPTER VI
THE ASSASSINATION
Elsie called in the afternoon at the Camerons’ lodgings, radiant with
pride, accompanied by her brother.
Captain Phil Stoneman, athletic, bronzed, a veteran of two years’ service,
dressed in his full uniform, was the ideal soldier, and yet he had never
loved war. He was bubbling over with quiet joy that the end had come
and he could soon return to a rational life. Inheriting his mother’s
temperament, he was generous, enterprising, quick, intelligent, modest,
and ambitious. War had seemed to him a horrible tragedy from the first.
He had early learned to respect a brave foe, and bitterness had long
since melted out of his heart.
He had laughed at his father’s harsh ideas of Southern life gained as a
politician, and, while loyal to him after a boy’s fashion, he took no stock
in his Radical programme.
The father, colossal egotist that he was, heard Phil’s protests with mild
amusement and quiet pride in his independence, for he loved this boy
with deep tenderness.
Phil had been touched by the story of Ben’s narrow escape, and was
anxious to show his mother and sister every courtesy possible in part
atonement for the wrong he felt had been done them. He was timid with
girls, and yet he wished to give Margaret a cordial greeting for Elsie’s
sake. He was not prepared for the shock the first appearance of the
Southern girl gave him.
When the stately figure swept through the door to greet him, her black
eyes sparkling with welcome, her voice low and tender with genuine
feeling, he caught his breath in surprise.
Elsie noted his confusion with amusement and said:
“I must go to the hospital for a little work. Now, Phil, I’ll meet you at the
door at eight o’clock.”
“I’ll not forget,” he answered abstractedly, watching Margaret intently
as she walked with Elsie to the door.
He saw that her dress was of coarse, unbleached cotton, dyed with the
juice of walnut hulls and set with wooden hand-made buttons. The story
these things told of war and want was eloquent, yet she wore them with
unconscious dignity. She had not a pin or brooch or piece of jewellery.
Everything about her was plain and smooth, graceful and gracious. Her
face was large—the lovely oval type—and her luxuriant hair, parted in
the middle, fell downward in two great waves. Tall, stately, handsome,
her dark rare Southern beauty full of subtle languor and indolent grace,
she was to Phil a revelation.
The coarse black dress that clung closely to her figure seemed alive
when she moved, vital with her beauty. The musical cadences of her
voice were vibrant with feeling, sweet, tender, and homelike. And the
odour of the rose she wore pinned low on her breast he could swear was
the perfume of her breath.
Lingering in her eyes and echoing in the tones of her voice, he caught
the shadowy memory of tears for the loved and lost that gave a strange
pathos and haunting charm to her youth.
She had returned quickly and was talking at ease with him.
“I’m not going to tell you, Captain Stoneman, that I hope to be a sister to
you. You have already made yourself my brother in what you did for
Ben.”
“Nothing, I assure you, Miss Cameron, that any soldier wouldn’t do for
a brave foe.”
“Perhaps; but when the foe happens to be an only brother, my chum and
playmate, brave and generous, whom I’ve worshipped as my beau-ideal
man—why, you know I must thank you for taking him in your arms that
day. May I, again?”
Phil felt the soft warm hand clasp his, while the black eyes sparkled and
glowed their friendly message.
He murmured something incoherently, looked at Margaret as if in a
spell, and forgot to let her hand go.
She laughed at last, and he blushed and dropped it as though it were a
live coal.
“I was about to forget, Miss Cameron. I wish to take you to the theatre
to-night, if you will go?”
“To the theatre?”
“Yes. It’s to be an occasion, Elsie tells me. Laura Keene’s last appearance
in ‘Our American Cousin,’ and her one-thousandth performance of the
play. She played it in Chicago at McVicker’s, when the President was
first nominated, to hundreds of the delegates who voted for him. He is
to be present to-night, so the Evening Star has announced, and General
and Mrs. Grant with him. It will be the opportunity of your life to see
these famous men—besides, I wish you to see the city illuminated on the
way.”
Margaret hesitated.
“I should like to go,” she said with some confusion. “But you see we are
old-fashioned Scotch Presbyterians down in our village in South
Carolina. I never was in a theatre—and this is Good Friday——”
“That’s a fact, sure,” said Phil thoughtfully. “It never occurred to me.
War is not exactly a spiritual stimulant, and it blurs the calendar. I
believe we fight on Sundays oftener than on any other day.”
“But I’m crazy to see the President since Ben’s pardon. Mamma will be
here in a moment, and I’ll ask her.”
“You see, it’s really an occasion,” Phil went on. “The people are all going
there to see President Lincoln in the hour of his triumph, and his great
General fresh from the field of victory. Grant has just arrived in town.”
Mrs. Cameron entered and greeted Phil with motherly tenderness.
“Captain, you’re so much like my boy! Had you noticed it, Margaret?”
“Of course, Mamma, but I was afraid I’d tire him with flattery if I tried
to tell him.”
“Only his hair is light and wavy, and Ben’s straight and black, or you’d
call them twins. Ben’s a little taller—excuse us, Captain Stoneman, but
we’ve fallen so in love with your little sister we feel we’ve known you all
our lives.”
“I assure you, Mrs. Cameron, your flattery is very sweet. Elsie and I do
not remember our mother, and all this friendly criticism is more than
welcome.”
“Mamma, Captain Stoneman asks me to go with him and his sister to-
night to see the President at the theatre. May I go?”
“Will the President be there, Captain?” asked Mrs. Cameron.
“Yes, Madam, with General and Mrs. Grant—it’s really a great public
function in celebration of peace and victory. To-day the flag was raised
over Fort Sumter, the anniversary of its surrender four years ago. The
city will be illuminated.”
“Then, of course, you can go. I will sit with Ben. I wish you to see the
President.”
At seven o’clock Phil called for Margaret. They walked to the Capitol hill
and down Pennsylvania Avenue.
The city was in a ferment. Vast crowds thronged the streets. In front of
the hotel where General Grant stopped the throng was so dense the
streets were completely blocked. Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, at every
turn, in squads, in companies, in regimental crowds, shouting cries of
victory.
The display of lights was dazzling in its splendour. Every building in
every street, in every nook and corner of the city, was lighted from attic
to cellar. The public buildings and churches vied with each other in the
magnificence of their decorations and splendour of illuminations.
They turned a corner, and suddenly the Capitol on the throne of its
imperial hill loomed a grand constellation in the heavens! Another look,
and it seemed a huge bonfire against the background of the dark skies.
Every window in its labyrinths of marble, from the massive base to its
crowning statue of Freedom, gleamed and flashed with light—more
than ten thousand jets poured their rays through its windows, besides
the innumerable lights that circled the mighty dome within and without.
Margaret stopped, and Phil felt her soft hand grip his arm with sudden
emotion.
“Isn’t it sublime!” she whispered.
“Glorious!” he echoed.
But he was thinking of the pressure of her hand on his arm and the
subtle tones of her voice. Somehow he felt that the light came from her
eyes. He forgot the Capitol and the surging crowds before the sweeter
creative wonder silently growing in his soul.
“And yet,” she faltered, “when I think of what all this means for our
people at home—their sorrow and poverty and ruin—you know it
makes me faint.”
Phil’s hand timidly sought the soft one resting on his arm and touched it
reverently.
“Believe me, Miss Margaret, it will be all for the best in the end. The
South will yet rise to a nobler life than she has ever lived in the past.
This is her victory as well as ours.”
“I wish I could think so,” she answered.
They passed the City Hall and saw across its front, in giant letters of fire
thirty feet deep, the words:
“UNION, SHERMAN, AND GRANT”
On Pennsylvania Avenue the hotels and stores had hung every window,
awning, cornice, and swaying tree-top with lanterns. The grand avenue
was bridged by tri-coloured balloons floating and shimmering ghostlike
far up in the dark sky. Above these, in the blacker zone toward the stars,
the heavens were flashing sheets of chameleon flames from bursting
rockets.
Margaret had never dreamed such a spectacle. She walked in awed
silence, now and then suppressing a sob for the memory of those she
had loved and lost. A moment of bitterness would cloud her heart, and
then with the sense of Phil’s nearness, his generous nature, the beauty
and goodness of his sister, and all they owed to her for Ben’s life, the
cloud would pass.
At every public building, and in front of every great hotel, bands were
playing. The wild war strains, floating skyward, seemed part of the
changing scheme of light. The odour of burnt powder and smouldering
rockets filled the warm spring air.
The deep bay of the great fort guns now began to echo from every
hilltop commanding the city, while a thousand smaller guns barked and
growled from every square and park and crossing.
Jay Cooke & Co’s. banking-house had stretched across its front, in
enormous blazing letters, the words:
“THE BUSY B’S—BALLS, BALLOTS, AND BONDS”
Every telegraph and newspaper office was a roaring whirlpool of
excitement, for the same scenes were being enacted in every centre of the
North. The whole city was now a fairy dream, its dirt and sin, shame
and crime, all wrapped in glorious light.
But above all other impressions was the contagion of the thunder shouts
of hosts of men surging through the streets—the human roar with its
animal and spiritual magnetism, wild, resistless, unlike any other force
in the universe!
Margaret’s hand again and again unconsciously tightened its hold on
Phil’s arm, and he felt that the whole celebration had been gotten up for
his benefit.
They passed through a little park on their way to Ford’s Theatre on 10th
Street, and the eye of the Southern girl was quick to note the budding
flowers and full-blown lilacs.
“See what an early spring!” she cried. “I know the flowers at home are
gorgeous now.”
“I shall hope to see you among them some day, when all the clouds have
lifted,” he said.
She smiled and replied with simple earnestness:
“A warm welcome will await your coming.”
And Phil resolved to lose no time in testing it.
They turned into 10th Street, and in the middle of the block stood the
plain three-story brick structure of Ford’s Theatre, an enormous crowd
surging about its five doorways and spreading out on the sidewalk and
half across the driveway.
“Is that the theatre?” asked Margaret.
“Yes.”
“Why, it looks like a church without a steeple.”
“Exactly what it really is, Miss Margaret. It was a Baptist church. They
turned it into a playhouse, by remodelling its gallery into a dress-circle
and balcony and adding another gallery above. My grandmother
Stoneman is a devoted Baptist, and was an attendant at this church. My
father never goes to church, but he used to go here occasionally to please
her. Elsie and I frequently came.”
Phil pushed his way rapidly through the crowd with a peculiar sense of
pleasure in making a way for Margaret and in defending her from the
jostling throng.
They found Elsie at the door, stamping her foot with impatience.
“Well, I must say, Phil, this is prompt for a soldier who had positive
orders,” she cried. “I’ve been here an hour.”
“Nonsense, Sis, I’m ahead of time,” he protested.
Elsie held up her watch.
“It’s a quarter past eight. Every seat is filled, and they’ve stopped selling
standing-room. I hope you have good seats.”
“The best in the house to-night, the first row in the balcony dress-circle,
opposite the President’s box. We can see everything on the stage, in the
box, and every nook and corner of the house.”
“Then I’ll forgive you for keeping me waiting.”
They ascended the stairs, pushed through the throng standing, and at
last reached the seats.
What a crowd! The building was a mass of throbbing humanity, and,
over all, the hum of the thrilling wonder of peace and victory!
The women in magnificent costumes, officers in uniforms flashing with
gold, the show of wealth and power, the perfume of flowers and the
music of violin and flutes gave Margaret the impression of a dream, so
sharp was the contrast with her own life and people in the South.
The interior of the house was a billow of red, white, and blue. The
President’s box was wrapped in two enormous silk flags with gold-
fringed edges gracefully draped and hanging in festoons.
Withers, the leader of the orchestra, was in high feather. He raised his
baton with quick, inspired movement. It was for him a personal
triumph, too. He had composed the music of a song for the occasion. It
was dedicated to the President, and the programme announced that it
would be rendered during the evening between the acts by a famous
quartet, assisted by the whole company in chorus. The National flag
would be draped about each singer, worn as the togas of ancient Greece
and Rome.
It was already known by the crowd that General and Mrs. Grant had left
the city for the North and could not be present, but every eye was fixed
on the door through which the President and Mrs. Lincoln would enter.
It was the hour of his supreme triumph.
What a romance his life! The thought of it thrilled the crowd as they
waited. A few years ago this tall, sad-faced man had floated down the
Sangamon River into a rough Illinois town, ragged, penniless, friendless,
alone, begging for work. Four years before he had entered Washington
as President of the United States—but he came under cover of the night
with a handful of personal friends, amid universal contempt for his
ability and the loud expressed conviction of his failure from within and
without his party. He faced a divided Nation and the most awful civil
convulsion in history. Through it all he had led the Nation in safety,
growing each day in power and fame, until to-night, amid the victorious
shouts of millions of a Union fixed in eternal granite, he stood forth the
idol of the people, the first great American, the foremost man of the
world.
There was a stir at the door, and the tall figure suddenly loomed in view
of the crowd. With one impulse they leaped to their feet, and shout after
shout shook the building. The orchestra was playing “Hail to the Chief!”
but nobody heard it. They saw the Chief! They were crying their own
welcome in music that came from the rhythmic beat of human hearts.
As the President walked along the aisle with Mrs. Lincoln, accompanied
by Senator Harris’ daughter and Major Rathbone, cheer after cheer burst
from the crowd. He turned, his face beaming with pleasure, and bowed
as he passed.
The answer of the crowd shook the building to its foundations, and the
President paused. His dark face flashed with emotion as he looked over
the sea of cheering humanity. It was a moment of supreme exaltation.
The people had grown to know and love and trust him, and it was
sweet. His face, lit with the responsive fires of emotion, was
transfigured. The soul seemed to separate itself from its dreamy, rugged
dwelling-place and flash its inspiration from the spirit world.
As around this man’s personality had gathered the agony and horror of
war, so now about his head glowed and gleamed in imagination the
splendours of victory.
Margaret impulsively put her hand on Phil’s arm:
“Why, how Southern he looks! How tall and dark and typical his whole
figure!”
“Yes, and his traits of character even more typical,” said Phil. “On the
surface, easy friendly ways and the tenderness of a woman—beneath, an
iron will and lion heart. I like him. And what always amazes me is his
universality. A Southerner finds in him the South, the Western man the
West, even Charles Sumner, from Boston, almost loves him. You know I
think he is the first great all-round American who ever lived in the
White House.”
The President’s party had now entered the box, and as Mr. Lincoln took
the armchair nearest the audience, in full view of every eye in the house,
again the cheers rent the air. In vain Withers’ baton flew, and the
orchestra did its best. The music was drowned as in the roar of the sea.
Again he rose and bowed and smiled, his face radiant with pleasure.
The soul beneath those deep-cut lines had long pined for the sunlight.
His love of the theatre and the humorous story were the protest of his
heart against pain and tragedy. He stood there bowing to the people, the
grandest, gentlest figure of the fiercest war of human history—a man
who was always doing merciful things stealthily as others do crimes.
Little sunlight had come into his life, yet to-night he felt that the sun of a
new day in his history and the history of the people was already
tingeing the horizon with glory.
Back of those smiles what a story! Many a night he had paced back and
forth in the telegraph office of the War Department, read its awful news
of defeat, and alone sat down and cried over the list of the dead. Many a
black hour his soul had seen when the honours of earth were forgotten
and his great heart throbbed on his sleeve. His character had grown so
evenly and silently with the burdens he had borne, working mighty
deeds with such little friction, he could not know, nor could the crowd
to whom he bowed, how deep into the core of the people’s life the love
of him had grown.
As he looked again over the surging crowd his tall figure seemed to
straighten, erect and buoyant, with the new dignity of conscious
triumphant leadership. He knew that he had come unto his own at last,
and his brain was teeming with dreams of mercy and healing.
The President resumed his seat, the tumult died away, and the play
began amid a low hum of whispered comment directed at the flag-
draped box. The actors struggled in vain to hold the attention of the
audience, until finally Hawk, the actor playing Dundreary, determined
to catch their ear, paused and said:
“Now, that reminds me of a little story, as Mr. Lincoln says——”
Instantly the crowd burst into a storm of applause, the President
laughed, leaned over and spoke to his wife, and the electric connection
was made between the stage, the box, and the people.
After this the play ran its smooth course, and the audience settled into
its accustomed humour of sympathetic attention.
In spite of the novelty of this, her first view of a theatre, the President
fascinated Margaret. She watched the changing lights and shadows of
his sensitive face with untiring interest, and the wonder of his life grew
upon her imagination. This man who was the idol of the North and yet
to her so purely Southern, who had come out of the West and yet was
greater than the West or the North, and yet always supremely human—
this man who sprang to his feet from the chair of State and bowed to a
sorrowing woman with the deference of a knight, every man’s friend,
good-natured, sensible, masterful and clear in intellect, strong, yet
modest, kind and gentle—yes, he was more interesting than all the
drama and romance of the stage!
He held her imagination in a spell. Elsie, divining her abstraction,
looked toward the President’s box and saw approaching it along the
balcony aisle the figure of John Wilkes Booth.
“Look,” she cried, touching Margaret’s arm. “There’s John Wilkes Booth,
the actor! Isn’t he handsome? They say he’s in love with my chum, a
senator’s daughter whose father hates Mr. Lincoln with perfect fury.”
“He is handsome,” Margaret answered. “But I’d be afraid of him, with
that raven hair and eyes shining like something wild.”
“They say he is wild and dissipated, yet half the silly girls in town are in
love with him. He’s as vain as a peacock.”
Booth, accustomed to free access to the theatre, paused near the entrance
to the box and looked deliberately over the great crowd, his magnetic
face flushed with deep emotion, while his fiery inspiring eyes glittered
with excitement.
Dressed in a suit of black broadcloth of faultless fit, from the crown of
his head to the soles of his feet he was physically without blemish. A
figure of perfect symmetry and proportion, his dark eyes flashing, his
marble forehead crowned with curling black hair, agility and grace
stamped on every line of his being—beyond a doubt he was the
handsomest man in America. A flutter of feminine excitement rippled
the surface of the crowd in the balcony as his well-known figure caught
the wandering eyes of the women.
He turned and entered the door leading to the President’s box, and
Margaret once more gave her attention to the stage.
Hawk, as Dundreary, was speaking his lines and looking directly at the
President instead of at the audience:
“Society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old
woman, you darned old sockdologing man trap!”
Margaret winced at the coarse words, but the galleries burst into shouts
of laughter that lingered in ripples and murmurs and the shuffling of
feet.
The muffled crack of a pistol in the President’s box hushed the laughter
for an instant.
No one realized what had happened, and when the assassin suddenly
leaped from the box, with a blood-marked knife flashing in his right
hand, caught his foot in the flags and fell to his knees on the stage, many
thought it a part of the programme, and a boy, leaning over the gallery
rail, giggled. When Booth turned his face of statuesque beauty lit by eyes
flashing with insane desperation and cried, “Sic semper tyrannis,” they
were only confirmed in this impression.
A sudden, piercing scream from Mrs. Lincoln, quivering, soul
harrowing! Leaning far out of the box, from ashen cheeks and lips
leaped the piteous cry of appeal, her hand pointing to the retreating
figure:
“The President is shot! He has killed the President!”
Every heart stood still for one awful moment. The brain refused to
record the message—and then the storm burst!
A wild roar of helpless fury and despair! Men hurled themselves over
the footlights in vain pursuit of the assassin. Already the clatter of his
horse’s feet could be heard in the distance. A surgeon threw himself
against the door of the box, but it had been barred within by the cunning
hand. Another leaped on the stage, and the people lifted him up in their
arms and over the fatal railing.
Women began to faint, and strong men trampled down the weak in mad
rushes from side to side.
The stage in a moment was a seething mass of crazed men, among them
the actors and actresses in costumes and painted faces, their mortal
terror shining through the rouge. They passed water up to the box, and
some tried to climb up and enter it.
The two hundred soldiers of the President’s guard suddenly burst in,
and, amid screams and groans of the weak and injured, stormed the
house with fixed bayonets, cursing, yelling, and shouting at the top of
their voices:
“Clear out! Clear out! You sons of hell!”
One of them suddenly bore down with fixed bayonet toward Phil.
Margaret shrank in terror close to his side and tremblingly held his arm.
Elsie sprang forward, her face aflame, her eyes flashing fire, her little
figure tense, erect, and quivering with rage:
“How dare you, idiot, brute!”
The soldier, brought to his senses, saw Phil in full captain’s uniform
before him, and suddenly drew himself up, saluting. Phil ordered him to
guard Margaret and Elsie for a moment, drew his sword, leaped
between the crazed soldiers and their victims and stopped their insane
rush.
Within the box the great head lay in the surgeon’s arms, the blood
slowly dripping down, and the tiny death bubbles forming on the kindly
lips. They carried him tenderly out, and another group bore after him
the unconscious wife. The people tore the seats from their fastenings and
heaped them in piles to make way for the precious burdens.
As Phil pressed forward with Margaret and Elsie through the open door
came the roar of the mob without, shouting its cries:
“The President is shot!”
“Seward is murdered!”
“Where is Grant?”
“Where is Stanton?”
“To arms! To arms!”
The peal of signal guns could now be heard, the roll of drums and the
hurried tramp of soldiers’ feet. They marched none too soon. The mob
had attacked the stockade holding ten thousand unarmed Confederate
prisoners.
At the corner of the block in which the theatre stood they seized a man
who looked like a Southerner and hung him to the lamp-post. Two
heroic policemen fought their way to his side and rescued him.
If the temper of the people during the war had been convulsive, now it
was insane—with one mad impulse and one thought—vengeance!
Horror, anger, terror, uncertainty, each passion fanned the one animal
instinct into fury.
Through this awful night, with the lights still gleaming as if to mock the
celebration of victory, the crowds swayed in impotent rage through the
streets, while the telegraph bore on the wings of lightning the awe-
inspiring news. Men caught it from the wires, and stood in silent groups
weeping, and their wrath against the fallen South began to rise as the
moaning of the sea under a coming storm.
At dawn black clouds hung threatening on the eastern horizon. As the
sun rose, tingeing them for a moment with scarlet and purple glory,
Abraham Lincoln breathed his last.
Even grim Stanton, the iron-hearted, stood by his bedside and through
blinding tears exclaimed:
“Now he belongs to the ages!”
The deed was done. The wheel of things had moved. Vice-President
Johnson took the oath of office, and men hailed him Chief; but the seat of
Empire had moved from the White House to a little dark house on the
Capitol hill, where dwelt an old club-footed man, alone, attended by a
strange brown woman of sinister animal beauty and the restless eyes of
a leopardess.
 CHAPTER VII
THE FRENZY OF A NATION
Phil hurried through the excited crowds with Margaret and Elsie, left
them at the hospital door, and ran to the War Department to report for
duty. Already the tramp of regiments echoed down every great avenue.
Even as he ran, his heart beat with a strange new stroke when he
recalled the look of appeal in Margaret’s dark eyes as she nestled close
to his side and clung to his arm for protection. He remembered with a
smile the almost resistless impulse of the moment to slip his arm around
her and assure her of safety. If he had only dared!
Elsie begged Mrs. Cameron and Margaret to go home with her until the
city was quiet.
“No,” said the mother. “I am not afraid. Death has no terrors for me any
longer. We will not leave Ben a moment now, day or night. My soul is
sick with dread for what this awful tragedy will mean for the South! I
can’t think of my own safety. Can any one undo this pardon now?” she
asked anxiously.
“I am sure they cannot. The name on that paper should be mightier dead
than living.”
“Ah, but will it be? Do you know Mr. Johnson? Can he control Stanton?
He seemed to be more powerful than the President himself. What will
that man do now with those who fall into his hands.”
“He can do nothing with your son, rest assured.”
“I wish I knew it,” said the mother wistfully.
A few moments after the President died on Saturday morning, the rain
began to pour in torrents. The flags that flew from a thousand gilt-
tipped peaks in celebration of victory drooped to half-mast and hung
weeping around their staffs. The litter of burnt fireworks, limp and
crumbling, strewed the streets, and the tri-coloured lanterns and
balloons, hanging pathetically from their wires, began to fall to pieces.
Never in all the history of man had such a conjunction of events befallen
a nation. From the heights of heaven’s rejoicing to be suddenly hurled to
the depths of hell in piteous helpless grief! Noon to midnight without a
moment between. A pall of voiceless horror spread its shadows over the
land. Nothing short of an earthquake or the sound of the archangel’s
trumpet could have produced the sense of helpless consternation, the
black and speechless despair. The people read their papers in tears. The
morning meal was untouched. By no other single feat could death have
carried such peculiar horror to every home. Around this giant figure the
heartstrings of the people had been unconsciously knit. Even his
political enemies had come to love him.
Above all, in just this moment he was the incarnation of the Triumphant
Union on the altar of whose life every house had laid the offering of its
first-born. The tragedy was stupefying—it was unthinkable—it was the
mockery of Fate!
Men walked the streets of the cities, dazed with the sense of blind grief.
Every note of music and rejoicing became a dirge. All business ceased.
Every wheel in every mill stopped. The roar of the great city was
hushed, and Greed for a moment forgot his cunning.
The army only moved with swifter spring, tightening its mighty grip on
the throat of the bleeding prostrate South.
As the day wore on its gloomy hours, and men began to find speech,
they spoke to each other at first in low tones of Fate, of Life, of Death, of
Immortality, of God—and then as grief found words the measureless
rage of baffled strength grew slowly to madness.
On every breeze from the North came the deep-muttered curses.
Easter Sunday dawned after the storm, clear and beautiful in a flood of
glorious sunshine. The churches were thronged as never in their history.
All had been decorated for the double celebration of Easter and the
triumph of the Union. The preachers had prepared sermons pitched in
the highest anthem key of victory—victory over death and the grave of
Calvary, and victory for the Nation opening a future of boundless glory.
The churches were labyrinths of flowers, and around every pulpit and
from every Gothic arch hung the red, white, and blue flags of the
Republic.
And now, as if to mock this gorgeous pageant, Death had in the night
flung a black mantle over every flag and wound a strangling web of
crape round every Easter flower.
When the preachers faced the silent crowds before them, looking into
the faces of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and lovers whose dear
ones had been slain in battle or died in prison pens, the tide of grief and
rage rose and swept them from their feet! The Easter sermon was laid
aside. Fifty thousand Christian ministers, stunned and crazed by insane
passion, standing before the altars of God, hurled into the broken hearts
before them the wildest cries of vengeance—cries incoherent, chaotic,
unreasoning, blind in their awful fury!
The pulpits of New York and Brooklyn led in the madness.
Next morning old Stoneman read his paper with a cold smile playing
about his big stern mouth, while his furrowed brow flushed with
triumph, as again and again he exclaimed: “At last! At last!”
Even Beecher, who had just spoken his generous words at Fort Sumter,
declared:
“Never while time lasts, while heaven lasts, while hell rocks and groans,
will it be forgotten that Slavery, by its minions, slew him, and slaying
him made manifest its whole nature. A man cannot be bred in its tainted
air. I shall find saints in hell sooner than I shall find true manhood under
its accursed influences. The breeding-ground of such monsters must be
utterly and forever destroyed.”
Dr. Stephen Tyng said:
“The leaders of this rebellion deserve no pity from any human being.
Now let them go. Some other land must be their home. Their property is
justly forfeited to the Nation they have attempted to destroy!”
In big black-faced type stood Dr. Charles S. Robinson’s bitter words:
“This is the earliest reply which chivalry makes to our forbearance. Talk
to me no more of the same race, of the same blood. He is no brother of
mine and of no race of mine who crowns the barbarism of treason with
the murder of an unarmed husband in the sight of his wife. On the
villains who led this rebellion let justice fall swift and relentless. Death
to every traitor of the South! Pursue them one by one! Let every door be
closed upon them and judgment follow swift and implacable as death!”
Dr. Theodore Cuyler exclaimed:
“This is no time to talk of leniency and conciliation! I say before God,
make no terms with rebellion short of extinction. Booth wielding the
assassin’s weapon is but the embodiment of the bowie-knife barbarism
of a slaveholding oligarchy.”
Dr. J. P. Thompson said:
“Blot every Southern State from the map. Strip every rebel of property
and citizenship, and send them into exile beggared and infamous
outcasts.”
Bishop Littlejohn, in his impassioned appeal, declared:
“The deed is worthy of the Southern cause which was conceived in sin,
brought forth in iniquity, and consummated in crime. This murderous
hand is the same hand which lashed the slave’s bared back, struck down
New England’s senator for daring to speak, lifted the torch of rebellion,
slaughtered in cold blood its thousands, and starved our helpless
prisoners. Its end is not martyrdom, but dishonour.”
Bishop Simpson said:
“Let every man who was a member of Congress and aided this rebellion
be brought to speedy punishment. Let every officer educated at public
expense, who turned his sword against his country, be doomed to a
traitor’s death!”
With the last note of this wild music lingering in the old Commoner’s
soul, he sat as if dreaming, laughed cynically, turned to the brown
woman and said:
“My speeches have not been lost after all. Prepare dinner for six. My
cabinet will meet here to-night.”
While the press was reëchoing these sermons, gathering strength as they
were caught and repeated in every town, village, and hamlet in the
North, the funeral procession started westward. It passed in grandeur
through the great cities on its journey of one thousand six hundred miles
to the tomb. By day, by night, by dawn, by sunlight, by twilight, and lit
by solemn torches, millions of silent men and women looked on his
dead face. Around the person of this tall, lonely man, rugged, yet full of
sombre dignity and spiritual beauty, the thoughts, hopes, dreams, and
ideals of the people had gathered in four years of agony and death, until
they had come to feel their own hearts beat in his breast and their own
life throb in his life. The assassin’s bullet had crashed into their own
brains, and torn their souls and bodies asunder.
The masses were swept from their moorings, and reason destroyed. All
historic perspective was lost. Our first assassination, there was no
precedent for comparison. It had been over two hundred years in the
world’s history since the last murder of a great ruler, when William of
Orange fell.
On the day set for the public funeral twenty million people bowed at the
same hour.
When the procession reached New York the streets were lined with a
million people. Not a sound could be heard save the tramp of soldiers’
feet and the muffled cry of the dirge. Though on every foot of earth
stood a human being, the silence of the desert and of death! The Nation’s
living heroes rode in that procession, and passed without a sign from
the people.
Four years ago he drove down Broadway as President-elect, unnoticed
and with soldiers in disguise attending him lest the mob should stone
him.
To-day, at the mention of his name in the churches, the preachers’ voices
in prayer wavered and broke into silence while strong men among the
crowd burst into sobs. Flags flew at half-mast from their steeples, and
their bells tolled in grief.
Every house that flew but yesterday its banner of victory was shrouded
in mourning. The flags and pennants of a thousand ships in the harbour
drooped at half-mast, and from every staff in the city streamed across
the sky the black mists of crape like strange meteors in the troubled
heavens.
For three days every theatre, school, court, bank, shop, and mill was
closed.
And with muttered curses men looked Southward.
Across Broadway the cortège passed under a huge transparency on
which appeared the words:
“A NATION BOWED IN GRIEF
WILL RISE IN MIGHT TO EXTERMINATE
THE LEADERS OF THIS ACCURSED REBELLION.”
Farther along swung the black-draped banner:
“JUSTICE TO TRAITORS
IS
MERCY TO THE PEOPLE.”
Another flapped its grim message:
“THE BARBARISM OF SLAVERY.
CAN BARBARISM GO FURTHER?”
Across the Ninth Regiment Armoury, in gigantic letters, were the words:
“TIME FOR WEEPING
BUT VENGEANCE IS NOT SLEEPING!”
When the procession reached Buffalo, the house of Millard Fillmore was
mobbed because the ex-President, stricken on a bed of illness, had
neglected to drape his house in mourning. The procession passed to
Springfield through miles of bowed heads dumb with grief. The plough
stopped in the furrow, the smith dropped his hammer, the carpenter his
plane, the merchant closed his door, the clink of coin ceased, and over all
hung brooding silence with low-muttered curses, fierce and incoherent.
No man who walked the earth ever passed to his tomb through such a
storm of human tears. The pageants of Alexander, Cæsar, and
Wellington were tinsel to this. Nor did the spirit of Napoleon, the
Corsican Lieutenant of Artillery who once presided over a congress of
kings whom he had conquered, look down on its like even in France.
And now that its pomp was done and its memory but bitterness and
ashes, but one man knew exactly what he wanted and what he meant to
do. Others were stunned by the blow. But the cold eyes of the Great
Commoner, leader of leaders, sparkled, and his grim lips smiled. From
him not a word of praise or fawning sorrow for the dead. Whatever he
might be, he was not a liar: when he hated, he hated.
The drooping flags, the city’s black shrouds, processions, torches, silent
seas of faces and bared heads, the dirges and the bells, the dim-lit
churches, wailing organs, fierce invectives from the altar, and the
perfume of flowers piled in heaps by silent hearts—to all these was he
heir.
And more—the fierce unwritten, unspoken, and unspeakable horrors of
the war itself, its passions, its cruelties, its hideous crimes and sufferings,
the wailing of its women, the graves of its men—all these now were his.
The new President bowed to the storm. In one breath he promised to
fulfil the plans of Lincoln. In the next he, too, breathed threats of
vengeance.
The edict went forth for the arrest of General Lee.
Would Grant, the Commanding General of the Army, dare protest?
There were those who said that if Lee were arrested and Grant’s
plighted word at Appomattox smirched, the silent soldier would not
only protest, but draw his sword, if need be, to defend his honour and
the honour of the Nation. Yet—would he dare? It remained to be seen.
The jails were now packed with Southern men, taken unarmed from
their homes. The old Capitol Prison was full, and every cell of every
grated building in the city, and they were filling the rooms of the Capitol
itself.
Margaret, hurrying from the market in the early morning with her
flowers, was startled to find her mother bowed in anguish over a
paragraph in the morning paper.
She rose and handed it to the daughter, who read:
“Dr. Richard Cameron, of South Carolina, arrived in Washington and
was placed in jail last night, charged with complicity in the murder of
President Lincoln. It was discovered that Jeff Davis spent the night at his
home in Piedmont, under the pretence of needing medical attention.
Beyond all doubt, Booth, the assassin, merely acted under orders from
the Arch Traitor. May the gallows have a rich and early harvest!”
Margaret tremblingly wound her arms around her mother’s neck. No
words broke the pitiful silence—only blinding tears and broken sobs.
 Book II—The Revolution
CHAPTER I
THE FIRST LADY OF THE LAND
The little house on the Capitol hill now became the centre of fevered
activity. This house, selected by its grim master to become the executive
mansion of the Nation, was perhaps the most modest structure ever
chosen for such high uses.
It stood, a small, two-story brick building, in an unpretentious street.
Seven windows opened on the front with black solid-panelled shutters.
The front parlour was scantily furnished. A huge mirror covered one
wall, and on the other hung a life-size oil portrait of Stoneman, and
between the windows were a portrait of Washington Irving and a
picture of a nun. Among his many charities he had always given
liberally to an orphanage conducted by a Roman Catholic sisterhood.
The back parlour, whose single window looked out on a small garden,
he had fitted up as a library, with leather-upholstered furniture, a large
desk and table, and scattered on the mantel and about its walls were the
photographs of his personal friends and a few costly prints. This room
he used as his executive office, and no person was allowed to enter it
without first stating his business or presenting a petition to the tawny
brown woman with restless eyes who sat in state in the front parlour
and received his visitors. The books in their cases gave evidence of little
use for many years, although their character indicated the tastes of a
man of culture. His Pliny, Cæsar, Cicero, Tacitus, Sophocles, and Homer
had evidently been read by a man who knew their beauties and loved
them for their own sake.
This house was now the Mecca of the party in power and the storm-
centre of the forces destined to shape the Nation’s life. Senators,
representatives, politicians of low and high degree, artists,
correspondents, foreign ministers, and cabinet officers hurried to
acknowledge their fealty to the uncrowned king, and hail the strange
brown woman who held the keys of his house as the first lady of the
land.
When Charles Sumner called, a curious thing happened. By a code
agreed on between them, Lydia Brown touched an electric signal which
informed the old Commoner of his appearance. Stoneman hobbled to
the folding-doors and watched through the slight opening the manner in
which the icy senator greeted the negress whom he was compelled to
meet thus as his social equal, though she was always particular to pose
as the superior of all who bowed the knee to the old man whose house
she kept.
Sumner at this time was supposed to be the most powerful man in
Congress. It was a harmless fiction which pleased him, and at which
Stoneman loved to laugh.
The senator from Massachusetts had just made a speech in Boston
expounding the “Equality of Man,” yet he could not endure personal
contact with a negro. He would go secretly miles out of the way to avoid
it.
Stoneman watched him slowly and daintily approach this negress and
touch her jewelled hand gingerly with the tips of his classic fingers as if
she were a toad. Convulsed, he scrambled back to his desk and hugged
himself while he listened to the flow of Lydia’s condescending
patronage in the next room.
“This world’s too good a thing to lose!” he chuckled. “I think I’ll live
always.”
When Sumner left, the hour for dinner had arrived, and by special
invitation two men dined with him.
On his right sat an army officer who had been dismissed from the
service, a victim of the mania for gambling. His ruddy face, iron-gray
hair, and jovial mien indicated that he enjoyed life in spite of troubles.
There were no clubs in Washington at this time except the regular
gambling-houses, of which there were more than one hundred in full
blast.
Stoneman was himself a gambler, and spent a part of almost every night
at Hall & Pemberton’s Faro Palace on Pennsylvania Avenue, a place
noted for its famous restaurant. It was here that he met Colonel Howle
and learned to like him. He was a man of talent, cool and audacious, and
a liar of such singular fluency that he quite captivated the old
Commoner’s imagination.
“Upon my soul, Howle,” he declared soon after they met, “you made
the mistake of your life going into the army. You’re a born politician.
You’re what I call a natural liar, just as a horse is a pacer, a dog a setter.
You lie without effort, with an ease and grace that excels all art. Had you
gone into politics, you could easily have been Secretary of State, to say
nothing of the vice-presidency. I would say President but for the fact
that men of the highest genius never attain it.”
From that moment Colonel Howle had become his charmed henchman.
Stoneman owned this man body and soul, not merely because he had
befriended him when he was in trouble and friendless, but because the
colonel recognized the power of the leader’s daring spirit and
revolutionary genius.
On his left sat a negro of perhaps forty years, a man of charming
features for a mulatto, who had evidently inherited the full physical
characteristics of the Aryan race, while his dark yellowish eyes beneath
his heavy brows glowed with the brightness of the African jungle. It was
impossible to look at his superb face, with its large, finely chiselled lips
and massive nose, his big neck and broad shoulders, and watch his eyes
gleam beneath the projecting forehead, without seeing pictures of the
primeval forest. “The head of a Cæsar and the eyes of the jungle” was
the phrase coined by an artist who painted his portrait.
His hair was black and glossy and stood in dishevelled profusion on his
head between a kink and a curl. He was an orator of great power, and
stirred a negro audience as by magic.
Lydia Brown had called Stoneman’s attention to this man, Silas Lynch,
and induced the statesman to send him to college. He had graduated
with credit and had entered the Methodist ministry. In his preaching to
the freedmen he had already become a marked man. No house could
hold his audiences.
As he stepped briskly into the dining-room and passed the brown
woman, a close observer might have seen him suddenly press her hand
and caught her sly answering smile, but the old man waiting at the head
of the table saw nothing.
The woman took her seat opposite Stoneman and presided over this
curious group with the easy assurance of conscious power. Whatever
her real position, she knew how to play the role she had chosen to
assume.
No more curious or sinister figure ever cast a shadow across the history
of a great nation than did this mulatto woman in the most corrupt hour
of American life. The grim old man who looked into her sleek tawny
face and followed her catlike eyes was steadily gripping the Nation by
the throat. Did he aim to make this woman the arbiter of its social life,
and her ethics the limit of its moral laws?
Even the white satellite who sat opposite Lynch flushed for a moment as
the thought flashed through his brain.
The old cynic, who alone knew his real purpose, was in his most genial
mood to-night, and the grim lines of his powerful face relaxed into
something like a smile as they ate and chatted and told good stories.
Lynch watched him with keen interest. He knew his history and
character, and had built on his genius a brilliant scheme of life.
This man who meant to become the dictator of the Republic had come
from the humblest early conditions. His father was a worthless
character, from whom he had learned the trade of a shoemaker, but his
mother, a woman of vigorous intellect and indomitable will, had
succeeded in giving her lame boy a college education. He had early
sworn to be a man of wealth, and to this purpose he had throttled the
dreams and ideals of a wayward imagination.
His hope of great wealth had not been realized. His iron mills in
Pennsylvania had been destroyed by Lee’s army. He had developed the
habit of gambling, which brought its train of extravagant habits, tastes,
and inevitable debts. In his vigorous manhood, in spite of his lameness,
he had kept a pack of hounds and a stable of fine horses. He had used
his skill in shoemaking to construct a set of stirrups to fit his lame feet,
and had become an expert hunter to hounds.
One thing he never neglected—to be in his seat in the House of
Representatives and wear its royal crown of leadership, sick or well, day
or night. The love of power was the breath of his nostrils, and his
ambitions had at one time been boundless. His enormous power to-day
was due to the fact that he had given up all hope of office beyond the
robes of the king of his party. He had been offered a cabinet position by
the elder Harrison and for some reason it had been withdrawn. He had
been promised a place in Lincoln’s cabinet, but some mysterious power
had snatched it away. He was the one great man who had now no
ambition for which to trim and fawn and lie, and for the very reason that
he had abolished himself he was the most powerful leader who ever
walked the halls of Congress.
His contempt for public opinion was boundless. Bold, original, scornful
of advice, of all the men who ever lived in our history he was the one
man born to rule in the chaos which followed the assassination of the
chief magistrate.
Audacity was stamped in every line of his magnificent head. His
choicest curses were for the cowards of his own party before whose
blanched faces he shouted out the hidden things until they sank back in
helpless silence and dismay. His speech was curt, his humour sardonic,
his wit biting, cruel, and coarse.
The incarnate soul of revolution, he despised convention and ridiculed
respectability.
There was but one weak spot in his armour—and the world never
suspected it: the consuming passion with which he loved his two
children. This was the side of his nature he had hidden from the eyes of
man. A refined egotism, this passion, perhaps—for he meant to live his
own life over in them—yet it was the one utterly human and lovable
thing about him. And if his public policy was one of stupendous avarice,
this dream of millions of confiscated wealth he meant to seize, it was not
for himself but for his children.
As he looked at Howle and Lynch seated in his library after dinner, with
his great plans seething in his brain, his eyes were flashing, intense, and
fiery, yet without colour—simply two centres of cold light.
“Gentlemen,” he said at length. “I am going to ask you to undertake for
the Government, the Nation, and yourselves a dangerous and important
mission. I say yourselves, because, in spite of all our beautiful lies, self is
the centre of all human action. Mr. Lincoln has fortunately gone to his
reward—fortunately for him and for his country. His death was
necessary to save his life. He was a useful man living, more useful dead.
Our party has lost its first President, but gained a god—why mourn?”
“We will recover from our grief,” said Howle.
The old man went on, ignoring the interruption:
“Things have somehow come my way. I am almost persuaded late in life
that the gods love me. The insane fury of the North against the South for
a crime which they were the last people on earth to dream of committing
is, of course, a power to be used—but with caution. The first execution
of a Southern leader on such an idiotic charge would produce a
revolution of sentiment. The people are an aggregation of hysterical
fools.”
“I thought you favoured the execution of the leaders of the rebellion?”
said Lynch with surprise.
“I did, but it is too late. Had they been tried by drum-head court-martial
and shot dead red-handed as they stood on the field in their uniforms,
all would have been well. Now sentiment is too strong. Grant showed
his teeth to Stanton and he backed down from Lee’s arrest. Sherman
refused to shake hands with Stanton on the grandstand the day his army
passed in review, and it’s a wonder he didn’t knock him down. Sherman
was denounced as a renegade and traitor for giving Joseph E. Johnston
the terms Lincoln ordered him to give. Lincoln dead, his terms are
treason! Yet had he lived, we should have been called upon to applaud
his mercy and patriotism. How can a man live in this world and keep his
face straight?”
“I believe God permitted Mr. Lincoln’s death to give the great
Commoner, the Leader of Leaders, the right of way,” cried Lynch with
enthusiasm.
The old man smiled. With all his fierce spirit he was as susceptible to
flattery as a woman—far more so than the sleek brown woman who
carried the keys of his house.
“The man at the other end of the avenue, who pretends to be President,
in reality an alien of the conquered province of Tennessee, is pressing
Lincoln’s plan of ‘restoring’ the Union. He has organized State
governments in the South, and their senators and representatives will
appear at the Capitol in December for admission to Congress. He thinks
they will enter——”
The old man broke into a low laugh and rubbed his hands.
“My full plans are not for discussion at this juncture. Suffice it to say, I
mean to secure the future of our party and the safety of this nation. The
one thing on which the success of my plan absolutely depends is the
confiscation of the millions of acres of land owned by the white people
of the South and its division among the negroes and those who fought
and suffered in this war——”
The old Commoner paused, pursed his lips, and fumbled his hands a
moment, the nostrils of his eagle-beaked nose breathing rapacity,
sensuality throbbing in his massive jaws, and despotism frowning from
his heavy brows.
“Stanton will probably add to the hilarity of nations, and amuse himself
by hanging a few rebels,” he went on, “but we will address ourselves to
serious work. All men have their price, including the present company,
with due apologies to the speaker——”
Howle’s eyes danced, and he licked his lips.
“If I haven’t suffered in this war, who has?”
“Your reward will not be in accordance with your sufferings. It will be
based on the efficiency with which you obey my orders. Read that——”
He handed to him a piece of paper on which he had scrawled his secret
instructions.
Another he gave to Lynch.
“Hand them back to me when you read them, and I will burn them.
These instructions are not to pass the lips of any man until the time is
ripe—four bare walls are not to hear them whispered.”
Both men handed to the leader the slips of paper simultaneously.
“Are we agreed, gentlemen?”
“Perfectly,” answered Howle.
“Your word is law to me, sir,” said Lynch.
“Then you will draw on me personally for your expenses, and leave for
the South within forty-eight hours. I wish your reports delivered to me
two weeks before the meeting of Congress.”
As Lynch passed through the hall on his way to the door, the brown
woman bade him good-night and pressed into his hand a letter.
As his yellow fingers closed on the missive, his eyes flashed for a
moment with catlike humour.
The woman’s face wore the mask of a sphinx.
 CHAPTER II
SWEETHEARTS
When the first shock of horror at her husband’s peril passed, it left a
strange new light in Mrs. Cameron’s eyes.
The heritage of centuries of heroic blood from the martyrs of old
Scotland began to flash its inspiration from the past. Her heart beat with
the unconscious life of men and women who had stood in the stocks,
and walked in chains to the stake with songs on their lips.
The threat against the life of Doctor Cameron had not only stirred her
martyr blood: it had roused the latent heroism of a beautiful girlhood.
To her he had ever been the lover and the undimmed hero of her girlish
dreams. She spent whole hours locked in her room alone. Margaret
knew that she was on her knees. She always came forth with shining
face and with soft words on her lips.
She struggled for two months in vain efforts to obtain a single interview
with him, or to obtain a copy of the charges. Doctor Cameron had been
placed in the old Capitol Prison, already crowded to the utmost. He was
in delicate health, and so ill when she had left home he could not
accompany her to Richmond.
Not a written or spoken word was allowed to pass those prison doors.
She could communicate with him only through the officers in charge.
Every message from him was the same. “I love you always. Do not
worry. Go home the moment you can leave Ben. I fear the worst at
Piedmont.”
When he had sent this message, he would sit down and write the truth
in a little diary he kept:
“Another day of anguish. How long, O Lord? Just one touch of her
hand, one last pressure of her lips, and I am content. I have no desire to
live—I am tired.”
The officers repeated the verbal messages, but they made no impression
on Mrs. Cameron. By a mental telepathy which had always linked her
life with his her soul had passed those prison bars. If he had written the
pitiful record with a dagger’s point on her heart, she could not have felt
it more keenly.
At times overwhelmed, she lay prostrate and sobbed in half-articulate
cries. And then from the silence and mystery of the spirit world in which
she felt the beat of the heart of Eternal Love would come again the
strange peace that passeth understanding. She would rise and go forth
to her task with a smile.
In July she saw Mrs. Surratt taken from this old Capitol Prison to be
hung with Payne, Herold, and Atzerodt for complicity in the
assassination. The military commission before whom this farce of justice
was enacted, suspicious of the testimony of the perjured wretches who
had sworn her life away, had filed a memorandum with their verdict
asking the President for mercy.
President Johnson never saw this memorandum. It was secretly
removed in the War Department, and only replaced after he had signed
the death warrant.
In vain Annie Surratt, the weeping daughter, flung herself on the steps
of the White House on the fatal day, begging and praying to see the
President. She could not believe they would allow her mother to be
murdered in the face of a recommendation of mercy. The fatal hour
struck at last, and the girl left the White House with set eyes and
blanched face, muttering incoherent curses.
The Chief Magistrate sat within, unconscious of the hideous tragedy that
was being enacted in his name. When he discovered the infamy by
which he had been made the executioner of an innocent woman, he
made his first demand that Edwin M. Stanton resign from his cabinet as
Secretary of War. And for the first time in the history of America, a
cabinet officer waived the question of honour and refused to resign.
With a shudder and blush of shame, strong men saw that day the
executioner gather the ropes tightly three times around the dress of an
innocent American mother and bind her ankles with cords. She fainted
and sank backward upon the attendants, the poor limbs yielding at last
to the mortal terror of death. But they propped her up and sprung the
fatal trap.
A feeling of uncertainty and horror crept over the city and the Nation, as
rumours of the strange doings of the “Bureau of Military Justice,” with
its secret factory of testimony and powers of tampering with verdicts,
began to find their way in whispered stories among the people.
Public opinion, however, had as yet no power of adjustment. It was an
hour of lapse to tribal insanity. Things had gone wrong. The demand for
a scapegoat, blind, savage, and unreasoning, had not spent itself. The
Government could do anything as yet, and the people would applaud.
Mrs. Cameron had tried in vain to gain a hearing before the President.
Each time she was directed to apply to Mr. Stanton. She refused to
attempt to see him, and again turned to Elsie for help. She had learned
that the same witnesses who had testified against Mrs. Surratt were
being used to convict Doctor Cameron, and her heart was sick with fear.
“Ask your father,” she pleaded, “to write President Johnson a letter in
my behalf. Whatever his politics, he can’t be your father and not be good
at heart.”
Elsie paled for a moment. It was the one request she had dreaded. She
thought of her father and Stanton with dread. How far he was
supporting the Secretary of War she could only vaguely guess. He rarely
spoke of politics to her, much as he loved her.
“I’ll try, Mrs. Cameron,” she faltered. “My father is in town to-day and
takes dinner with us before he leaves for Pennsylvania to-night. I’ll go at
once.”
With fear, and yet boldly, she went straight home to present her request.
She knew he was a man who never cherished small resentments,
however cruel and implacable might be his public policies. And yet she
dreaded to put it to the test.
“Father, I’ve a very important request to make of you,” she said gravely.
“Very well, my child, you need not be so solemn. What is it?”
“I’ve some friends in great distress—Mrs. Cameron, of South Carolina,
and her daughter Margaret.”
“Friends of yours?” he asked with an incredulous smile. “Where on
earth did you find them?”
“In the hospital, of course. Mrs. Cameron is not allowed to see her
husband, who has been here in jail for over two months. He cannot write
to her, nor can he receive a letter from her. He is on trial for his life, is ill
and helpless, and is not allowed to know the charges against him, while
hired witnesses and detectives have broken open his house, searched his
papers, and are ransacking heaven and earth to convict him of a crime of
which he never dreamed. It’s a shame. You don’t approve of such
things, I know?”
“What’s the use of my expressing an opinion when you have already
settled it?” he answered good-humouredly.
“You don’t approve of such injustice?”
“Certainly not, my child. Stanton’s frantic efforts to hang a lot of
prominent Southern men for complicity in Booth’s crime is sheer
insanity. Nobody who has any sense believes them guilty. As a
politician I use popular clamour for my purposes, but I am not an idiot.
When I go gunning, I never use a popgun or hunt small game.”
“Then you will write the President a letter asking that they be allowed to
see Doctor Cameron?”
The old man frowned.
“Think, father, if you were in jail and friendless, and I were trying to see
you——”
“Tut, tut, my dear, it’s not that I am unwilling—I was only thinking of
the unconscious humour of my making a request of the man who at
present accidentally occupies the White House. Of all the men on earth,
this alien from the province of Tennessee! But I’ll do it for you. When
did you ever know me to deny my help to a weak man or woman in
distress?”
“Never, father. I was sure you would do it,” she answered warmly.
He wrote the letter at once and handed it to her.
She bent and kissed him.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to know that you have no part in such
injustice.”
“You should not have believed me such a fool, but I’ll forgive you for
the kiss. Run now with this letter to your rebel friends, you little traitor!
Wait a minute——”
He shuffled to his feet, placed his hand tenderly on her head, and
stooped and kissed the shining hair.
“I wonder if you know how I love you? How I’ve dreamed of your
future? I may not see you every day as I wish; I’m absorbed in great
affairs. But more and more I think of you and Phil. I’ll have a big
surprise for you both some day.”
“Your love is all I ask,” she answered simply.
Within an hour, Mrs. Cameron found herself before the new President.
The letter had opened the door as by magic. She poured out her story
with impetuous eloquence while Mr. Johnson listened in uneasy silence.
His ruddy face, his hesitating manner, and restless eyes were in striking
contrast to the conscious power of the tall dark man who had listened so
tenderly and sympathetically to her story of Ben but a few weeks before.
The President asked:
“Have you seen Mr. Stanton?”
“I have seen him once,” she cried with sudden passion. “It is enough. If
that man were God on His throne, I would swear allegiance to the devil
and fight him!”
The President lifted his eyebrows and his lips twitched with a smile:
“I shouldn’t say that your spirits are exactly drooping! I’d like to be near
and hear you make that remark to the distinguished Secretary of War.”
“Will you grant my prayer?” she pleaded.
“I will consider the matter,” he promised evasively.
Mrs. Cameron’s heart sank.
“Mr. President,” she cried bitterly, “I have felt sure that I had but to see
you face to face and you could not deny me. Surely it is but justice that
he have the right to see his loved ones, to consult with counsel, to know
the charges against him, and defend his life when attacked in his
poverty and ruin by all the power of a mighty government? He is feeble
and broken in health and suffering from wounds received carrying the
flag of the Union to victory in Mexico. Whatever his errors of judgment
in this war, it is a shame that a Nation for which he once bared his breast
in battle should treat him as an outlaw without a trial.”
“You must remember, madam,” interrupted the President, “that these
are extraordinary times, and that popular clamour, however unjust, will
make itself felt and must be heeded by those in power. I am sorry for
you, and I trust it may be possible for me to grant your request.”
“But I wish it now,” she urged. “He sends me word I must go home. I
can’t leave without seeing him. I will die first.”
She drew closer and continued in throbbing tones:
“Mr. President, you are a native Carolinian—you are of Scotch
Covenanter blood. You are of my own people of the great past, whose
tears and sufferings are our common glory and birthright. Come, you
must hear me—I will take no denial. Give me now the order to see my
husband!”
The President hesitated, struggling with deep emotion, called his
secretary, and gave the order.
As she hurried away with Elsie, who insisted on accompanying her to
the jail door, the girl said:
“Mrs. Cameron, I fear you are without money. You must let me help you
until you can return it.”
“You are the dearest little heart I’ve met in all the world, I think
sometimes,” said the older woman, looking at her tenderly. “I wonder
how I can ever pay you for half you’ve done already.”
“The doing of it has been its own reward,” was the soft reply. “May I
help you?”
“If I need it, yes. But I trust it will not be necessary. I still have a little
store of gold Doctor Cameron was wise enough to hoard during the war.
I brought half of it with me when I left home, and we buried the rest. I
hope to find it on my return. And if we can save the twenty bales of
cotton we have hidden we shall be relieved of want.”
“I’m ashamed of my country when I think of such ignoble methods as
have been used against Doctor Cameron. My father is indignant, too.”
The last sentence Elsie spoke with eager girlish pride.
“I am very grateful to your father for his letter. I am sorry he has left the
city before I could meet and thank him personally. You must tell him for
me.”
At the jail the order of the President was not honoured for three hours,
and Mrs. Cameron paced the street in angry impatience at first and then
in dull despair.
“Do you think that man Stanton would dare defy the President?” she
asked anxiously.
“No,” said Elsie, “but he is delaying as long as possible as an act of petty
tyranny.”
At last the messenger arrived from the War Department permitting an
order of the Chief Magistrate of the nation, the Commander-in-Chief of
its Army and Navy, to be executed.
The grated door swung on its heavy hinges, and the wife and mother lay
sobbing in the arms of the lover of her youth.
For two hours they poured into each other’s hearts the story of their
sorrows and struggles during the six fateful months that had passed.
When she would return from every theme back to his danger, he would
laugh her fears to scorn.
“Nonsense, my dear, I’m as innocent as a babe. Mr. Davis was suffering
from erysipelas, and I kept him in my house that night to relieve his
pain. It will all blow over. I’m happy now that I have seen you. Ben will
be up in a few days. You must return at once. You have no idea of the
wild chaos at home. I left Jake in charge. I have implicit faith in him, but
there’s no telling what may happen. I will not spend another moment in
peace until you go.”
The proud old man spoke of his own danger with easy assurance. He
was absolutely certain, since the day of Mrs. Surratt’s execution, that he
would be railroaded to the gallows by the same methods. He had long
looked on the end with indifference, and had ceased to desire to live
except to see his loved ones again.
In vain she warned him of danger.
“My peril is nothing, my love,” he answered quietly. “At home, the
horrors of a servile reign of terror have become a reality. These prison
walls do not interest me. My heart is with our stricken people. You must
go home. Our neighbour, Mr. Lenoir, is slowly dying. His wife will
always be a child. Little Marion is older and more self-reliant. I feel as if
they are our own children. There are so many who need us. They have
always looked to me for guidance and help. You can do more for them
than any one else. My calling is to heal others. You have always helped
me. Do now as I ask you.”
At last she consented to leave for Piedmont on the following day, and he
smiled.
“Kiss Ben and Margaret for me and tell them that I’ll be with them
soon,” he said cheerily. He meant in the spirit, not the flesh. Not the
faintest hope of life even flickered in his mind.
In the last farewell embrace a faint tremor of the soul, half sigh, half
groan, escaped his lips, and he drew her again to his breast, whispering:
“Always my sweetheart, good, beautiful, brave, and true!”
 CHAPTER III
THE JOY OF LIVING
Within two weeks after the departure of Mrs. Cameron and Margaret,
the wounded soldier had left the hospital with Elsie’s hand resting on
his arm and her keen eyes watching his faltering steps. She had
promised Margaret to take her place until he was strong again. She was
afraid to ask herself the meaning of the songs that were welling up from
the depth of her own soul. She told herself again and again that she was
fulfilling her ideal of unselfish human service.
Ben’s recovery was rapid, and he soon began to give evidence of his
boundless joy in the mere fact of life.
He utterly refused to believe his father in danger.
“What, my dad a conspirator, an assassin!” he cried, with a laugh.
“Why, he wouldn’t kill a flea without apologising to it. And as for plots
and dark secrets, he never had a secret in his life and couldn’t keep one
if he had it. My mother keeps all the family secrets. Crime couldn’t stick
to him any more than dirty water to a duck’s back!”
“But we must secure his release on parole, that he may defend himself.”
“Of course. But we won’t cross any bridges till we come to them. I never
saw things so bad they couldn’t be worse. Just think what I’ve been
through. The war’s over. Don’t worry.”
He looked at her tenderly.
“Get that banjo and play ‘Get out of the Wilderness!’”
His spirit was contagious and his good humour resistless. Elsie spent the
days of his convalescence in an unconscious glow of pleasure in his
companionship. His handsome boyish face, his bearing, his whole
personality, invited frankness and intimacy. It was a divine gift, this
magnetism, the subtle meeting of quick intelligence, tact, and sympathy.
His voice was tender and penetrating, with soft caresses in its tones. His
vision of life was large and generous, with a splendid carelessness about
little things that didn’t count. Each day Elsie saw new and striking traits
of his character which drew her.
“What will we do if Stanton arrests you one of these fine days?” she
asked him one day.
“Afraid they’ll nab me for something?” he exclaimed. “Well, that is a
joke. Don’t you worry. The Yankees know who to fool with. I licked ’em
too many times for them to bother me any more.”
“I was under the impression that you got licked,” Elsie observed.
“Don’t you believe it. We wore ourselves out whipping the other
fellows.”
Elsie smiled, took up the banjo, and asked him to sing while she played.
She had no idea that he could sing, yet to her surprise he sang his camp
songs boldly, tenderly, and with deep, expressive feeling.
As the girl listened, the memory of the horrible hours of suspense she
had spent with his mother when his unconscious life hung on a thread
came trooping back into her heart and a tear dimmed her eyes.
And he began to look at her with a new wonder and joy slowly growing
in his soul.
 CHAPTER IV
HIDDEN TREASURE
Ben had spent a month of vain effort to secure his father’s release. He
had succeeded in obtaining for him a removal to more comfortable
quarters, books to read, and the privilege of a daily walk under guard
and parole. The doctor’s genial temper, the wide range of his
knowledge, the charm of his personality, and his heroism in suffering
had captivated the surgeons who attended him and made friends of
every jailer and guard.
Elsie was now using all her woman’s wit to secure a copy of the charges
against him as formulated by the Judge Advocate General, who, in
defiance of civil law, still claimed control of these cases.
To the boy’s sanguine temperament the whole proceeding had been a
huge farce from the beginning, and at the last interview with his father
he had literally laughed him into good humour.
“Look here, pa,” he cried. “I believe you’re trying to slip off and leave us
in this mess. It’s not fair. It’s easy to die.”
“Who said I was going to die?”
“I heard you were trying to crawl out that way.”
“Well, it’s a mistake. I’m going to live just for the fun of disappointing
my enemies and to keep you company. But you’d better get hold of a
copy of these charges against me—if you don’t want me to escape.”
“It’s a funny world if a man can be condemned to death without any
information on the subject.”
“My son, we are now in the hands of the revolutionists, army sutlers,
contractors, and adventurers. The Nation will touch the lowest tide-mud
of its degradation within the next few years. No man can predict the
end.”
“Oh, go ’long!” said Ben. “You’ve got jail cobwebs in your eyes.”
“I’m depending on you.”
“I’ll pull you through if you don’t lie down on me and die to get out of
trouble. You know you can die if you try hard enough.”
“I promise you, my boy,” he said with a laugh.
“Then I’ll let you read this letter from home,” Ben said, suddenly
thrusting it before him.
The doctor’s hand trembled a little as he put on his glasses and read:
My Dear Boy: I cannot tell you how much good your bright letters have
done us. It’s like opening the window and letting in the sunlight while
fresh breezes blow through one’s soul.
Margaret and I have had stirring times. I send you enclosed an order for
the last dollar of money we have left. You must hoard it. Make it last
until your father is safe at home. I dare not leave it here. Nothing is safe.
Every piece of silver and everything that could be carried has been
stolen since we returned.
Uncle Aleck betrayed the place Jake had hidden our twenty precious
bales of cotton. The war is long since over, but the “Treasury Agent”
declared them confiscated, and then offered to relieve us of his order if
we gave him five bales, each worth three hundred dollars in gold. I
agreed, and within a week another thief came and declared the other
fifteen bales confiscated. They steal it, and the Government never gets a
cent. We dared not try to sell it in open market, as every bale exposed for
sale is “confiscated” at once.
No crop was planted this summer. The negroes are all drawing rations
at the Freedman’s Bureau.
We have turned our house into a hotel, and our table has become
famous. Margaret is a treasure. She has learned to do everything. We
tried to raise a crop on the farm when we came home, but the negroes
stopped work. The Agent of the Bureau came to us and said he could
send them back for a fee of $50. We paid it, and they worked a week. We
found it easier to run a hotel. We hope to start the farm next year.
Our new minister at the Presbyterian Church is young, handsome, and
eloquent—Rev. Hugh McAlpin.
Mr. Lenoir died last week—but his end was so beautiful, our tears were
half joy. He talked incessantly of your father and how the country
missed him. He seemed much better the day before the end came, and
we took him for a little drive to Lovers’ Leap. It was there, sixteen years
ago, he made love to Jeannie. When we propped him up on the rustic
seat, and he looked out over the cliff and the river below, I have never
seen a face so transfigured with peace and joy.
“What a beautiful world it is, my dears!” he exclaimed, taking Jeannie
and Marion both by the hand.
They began to cry, and he said with a smile:
“Come now—do you love me?”
And they covered his hands with kisses.
“Well, then you must promise me two things faithfully here, with Mrs.
Cameron to witness!”
“We promise,” they both said in a breath.
“That when I fall asleep, not one thread of black shall ever cloud the
sunlight of our little home, that you will never wear it, and that you will
show your love for me by making my flowers grow richer, that you will
keep my memory green by always being as beautiful as you are to-day,
and make this old world a sweeter place to live in. I wish you, Jeannie,
my mate, to keep on making the young people glad. Don’t let their joys
be less even for a month because I have laid down to rest. Let them sing
and dance——”
“Oh, Papa!” cried Marion.
“Certainly, my little serious beauty—I’ll not be far away, I’ll be near and
breathe my songs into their hearts, and into yours—you both promise?”
“Yes, yes!” they both cried.
As we drove back through the woods, he smiled tenderly and said to
me:
“My neighbour, Doctor Cameron, pays taxes on these woods, but I own
them! Their sighing boughs, stirred by the breezes, have played for me
oratorios grander than all the scores of human genius. I’ll hear the Choir
Invisible play them when I sleep.”
He died that night suddenly. With his last breath he sighed:
“Draw the curtains and let me see again the moonlit woods!”
They are trying to carry out his wishes. I found they had nothing to eat,
and that he had really died from insufficient nourishment—a polite
expression meaning starvation. I’ve divided half our little store with
them and send the rest to you. I think Marion more and more the
incarnate soul of her father. I feel as if they are both my children.
My little grandchick, Hugh, is the sweetest youngster alive. He was a
wee thing when you left. Mrs. Lenoir kept him when they arrested your
father. He is so much like your brother Hugh I feel as if he has come to
life again. You should hear him say grace, so solemnly and tenderly, we
can’t help crying. He made it up himself. This is what he says at every
meal:
“God, please give my grandpa something good to eat in jail, keep him
well, don’t let the pains hurt him any more, and bring him home to me
quick, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.”
I never knew before how the people loved the doctor, nor how
dependent they were on him for help and guidance. Men, both white
and coloured, come here every day to ask about him. Some of them
come from far up in the mountains.
God alone knows how lonely our home and the world has seemed
without him. They say that those who love and live the close sweet
home life for years grow alike in soul and body, in tastes, ways, and
habits. I find it so. People have told me that your father and I are more
alike than brother and sister of the same blood. In spirit I’m sure it’s
true. I know you love him and that you will leave nothing undone for
his health and safety. Tell him that my only cure for loneliness in his
absence is my fight to keep the wolf from the door, and save our home
against his coming.
Lovingly, your MOTHER.
When the doctor had finished the reading, he looked out the window of
the jail at the shining dome of the Capitol for a moment in silence.
“Do you know, my boy, that you have the heritage of royal blood? You
are the child of a wonderful mother. I’m ashamed when I think of the
helpless stupor under which I have given up, and then remember the
deathless courage with which she has braved it all—the loss of her boys,
her property, your troubles and mine. She has faced the world alone like
a wounded lioness standing over her cubs. And now she turns her home
into a hotel, and begins life in a strange new world without one doubt of
her success. The South is yet rich even in its ruin.”
“Then you’ll fight and go back to her with me?”
“Yes, never fear.”
“Good! You see, we’re so poor now, pa, you’re lucky to be saving a
board bill here. I’d ‘conspire’ myself and come in with you but for the
fact it would hamper me a little in helping you.”
 CHAPTER V
ACROSS THE CHASM
When Ben had fully recovered and his father’s case looked hopeful, Elsie
turned to her study of music, and the Southern boy suddenly waked to
the fact that the great mystery of life was upon him. He was in love at
last—genuinely, deeply, without one reservation. He had from habit
flirted in a harmless way with every girl he knew. He left home with
little Marion Lenoir’s girlish kiss warm on his lips. He had made love to
many a pretty girl in old Virginia as the red tide of war had ebbed and
flowed around Stuart’s magic camps.
But now the great hour of the soul had struck. No sooner had he
dropped the first tender words that might have their double meaning,
feeling his way cautiously toward her, than she had placed a gulf of
dignity between them, and attempted to cut every tie that bound her life
to his.
It had been so sudden it took his breath away. Could he win her? The
word “fail” had never been in his vocabulary. It had never run in the
speech of his people.
Yes, he would win if it was the only thing he did in this world. And
forthwith he set about it. Life took on new meaning and new glory.
What mattered war or wounds, pain or poverty, jails and revolutions—it
was the dawn of life!
He sent her a flower every day and pinned one just like it on his coat.
And every night found him seated by her side. She greeted him
cordially, but the gulf yawned between them. His courtesy and self-
control struck her with surprise and admiration. In the face of her
coldness he carried about him an air of smiling deference and gallantry.
She finally told him of her determination to go to New York to pursue
her studies until Phil had finished the term of his enlistment in his
regiment, which had been ordered on permanent duty in the West.
He laughed with his eyes at this announcement, blinking the lashes
rapidly without moving his lips. It was a peculiar habit of his when
deeply moved by a sudden thought. It had flashed over him like
lightning that she was trying to get away from him. She would not do
that unless she cared.
“When are you going?” he asked quietly.
“Day after to-morrow.”
“Then you will give me one afternoon for a sail on the river to say good-
bye and thank you for what you have done for me and mine?”
She hesitated, laughed, and refused.
“To-morrow at four o’clock I’ll call for you,” he said firmly. “If there’s
no wind, we can drift with the tide.”
“I will not have time to go.”
“Promptly at four,” he repeated as he left.
Ben spent hours that night weighing the question of how far he should
dare to speak his love. It had been such an easy thing before. Now it
seemed a question of life and death. Twice the magic words had been on
his lips, and each time something in her manner chilled him into silence.
Was she cold and incapable of love? No; this manner of the North was
on the surface. He knew that deep down within her nature lay banked
and smouldering fires of passion for the one man whose breath could
stir it into flame. He felt this all the keener now that the spell of her
companionship and the sweet intimacy of her daily ministry to him had
been broken. The memory of little movements of her petite figure, the
glance of her warm amber eyes, and the touch of her hand—all had their
tongues of revelation to his eager spirit.
He found her ready at four o’clock.
“You see I decided to go after all,” she said.
“Yes, I knew you would,” he answered.
She was dressed in a simple suit of navy-blue cloth cut V-shaped at the
throat, showing the graceful lines of her exquisite neck as it melted into
the plump shoulders. She had scorned hoop skirts.
He admired her for this, and yet it made him uneasy. A woman who
could defy an edict of fashion was a new thing under the sun, and it
scared him.
They were seated in the little sailboat now, drifting out with the tide. It
was a perfect day in October, one of those matchless days of Indian
summer in the Virginia climate when an infinite peace and vast
brooding silence fill the earth and sky until one feels that words are a
sacrilege.
Neither of them spoke for minutes, and his heart grew bold in the
stillness. No girl could be still who was unmoved.
She was seated just in front of him on the left, with her hand idly
rippling the surface of the silvery waters, gazing at the wooded cliff on
the river banks clothed now in their gorgeous robes of yellow, purple,
scarlet, and gold.
The soft strains of distant music came from a band in the fort, and her
hand in the rippling water seemed its accompaniment.
Ben was conscious only of her presence. Every sight and sound of nature
seemed to be blended in her presence. Never in all his life had he seen
anything so delicately beautiful as the ripe rose colour of her cheeks, and
all the tints of autumn’s glory seemed to melt into the gold of her hair.
And those eyes he felt that God had never set in such a face before—rich
amber, warm and glowing, big and candid, courageous and truthful.
“Are you dead again?” she asked demurely.
“Well, as the Irishman said in answer to his mate’s question when he fell
off the house, ‘not dead—but spacheless.’”
He was quick to see the opening her question with its memories had
made, and took advantage of it.
“Look here, Miss Elsie, you’re too honest, independent, and candid to
play hide-and-seek with me. I want to ask you a plain question. You’ve
been trying to pick a quarrel of late. What have I done?”
“Nothing. It has simply come to me that our lives are far apart. The gulf
between us is real and very deep. Your father was but yesterday a
slaveholder——”
Ben grinned:
“Yes, your slave-trading grandfather sold them to us the day before.”
Elsie blushed and bristled for a fight.
“You won’t mind if I give you a few lessons in history, will you?” Ben
asked softly.
“Not in the least. I didn’t know that Southerners studied history,” she
answered, with a toss of her head.
“We made a specialty of the history of slavery, at least. I had a dear old
teacher at home who fairly blazed with light on this subject. He is one of
the best-read men in America. He happens to be in jail just now. But I
haven’t forgotten—I know it by heart.”
“I am waiting for light,” she interrupted cynically.
“The South is no more to blame for negro slavery than the North. Our
slaves were stolen from Africa by Yankee skippers. When a slaver
arrived at Boston, your pious Puritan clergyman offered public prayer of
thanks that ‘A gracious and overruling Providence had been pleased to
bring to this land of freedom another cargo of benighted heathen to
enjoy the blessings of a gospel dispensation——’”
She looked at him with angry incredulity and cried:
“Go on.”
“Twenty-three times the Legislature of Virginia passed acts against the
importation of slaves, which the king vetoed on petition of the
Massachusetts slave traders. Jefferson made these acts of the king one of
the grievances of the Declaration of Independence, but a Massachusetts
member succeeded in striking it out. The Southern men in the
convention which framed the Constitution put into it a clause abolishing
the slave trade, but the Massachusetts men succeeded in adding a clause
extending the trade twenty years——”
He smiled and paused.
“Go on,” she said, with impatience.
“In Colonial days a negro woman was publicly burned to death in
Boston. The first Abolition paper was published in Tennessee by
Embree. Benjamin Lundy, his successor, could not find a single
Abolitionist in Boston. In 1828 over half the people of Tennessee
favoured Abolition. At this time there were one hundred and forty
Abolition Societies in America—one hundred and three in the South,
and not one in Massachusetts. It was not until 1836 that Massachusetts
led in Abolition—not until all her own slaves had been sold to us at a
profit and the slave trade had been destroyed——”
She looked at Ben with anger for a moment and met his tantalizing look
of good humour.
“Can you stand any more?”
“Certainly, I enjoy it.”
“I’m just breaking down the barriers—so to speak,” he said, with the
laughter still lurking in his eyes, as he looked steadily ahead.
“By all means go on,” she said soberly. “I thought at first you were
trying to tease me. I see that you are in earnest.”
“Never more so. This is about the only little path of history I’m at home
in—I love to show off in it. I heard a cheerful idiot say the other day that
your father meant to carry the civilization of Massachusetts to the Rio
Grande until we had a Democracy in America. I smiled. While
Massachusetts was enforcing laws about the dress of the rich and the
poor, founding a church with a whipping-post, jail, and gibbet, and
limiting the right to vote to a church membership fixed by pew rents,
Carolina was the home of freedom where first the equal rights of men
were proclaimed. New England people worth less than one thousand
dollars were prohibited by law from wearing the garb of a gentleman,
gold or silver lace, buttons on the knees, or to walk in great boots, or
their women to wear silk or scarfs, while the Quakers, Maryland
Catholics, Baptists, and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians were everywhere in
the South the heralds of man’s equality before the law.”
“But barring our ancestors, I have some things against the men of this
generation.”
“Have I, too, sinned and come short?” he asked with mock gravity.
“Our ideals of life are far apart,” she firmly declared.
“What ails my ideal?”
“Your egotism, for one thing. The air with which you calmly select what
pleases your fancy. Northern men are bad enough—the insolence of a
Southerner is beyond words!”
“You don’t say so!” cried Ben, bursting into a hearty laugh. “Isn’t your
aunt, Mrs. Farnham, the president of a club?”
“Yes, and she is a very brilliant woman.”
“Enlighten me further.”
“I deny your heaven-born male kingship. The lord of creation is after all
a very inferior animal—nearer the brute creation, weaker in infancy,
shorter lived, more imperfectly developed, given to fighting, and
addicted to idiocy. I never saw a female idiot in my life—did you?”
“Come to think of it, I never did,” acknowledged Ben with comic
gravity. “What else?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“It’s nothing. I agree with everything you say, but it is irrelevant. I’m
studying law, you know.”
“I have a personality of my own. You and your kind assume the right to
absorb all lesser lights.”
“Certainly, I’m a man.”
“I don’t care to be absorbed by a mere man.”
“Don’t wish to be protected, sheltered, and cared for?”
“I dream of a life that shall be larger than the four walls of a home. I
have never gone into hysterics over the idea of becoming a cook and
housekeeper without wages, and snuffing my life out while another
grows, expands, and claims the lordship of the world. I can sing. My
voice is to me what eloquence is to man. My ideal is an intellectual
companion who will inspire and lead me to develop all that I feel within
to its highest reach.”
She paused a moment and looked defiantly into Ben’s brown eyes, about
which a smile was constantly playing. He looked away, and again the
river echoed with his contagious laughter. She had to join in spite of
herself. He laughed with boyish gayety. It danced in his eyes, and gave
spring to every movement of his slender wiry body. She felt its
contagion enfold her.
His laughter melted into a song. In a voice vibrant with joy he sang, “If
you get there before I do, tell ’em I’m comin’ too!”
As Elsie listened, her anger grew as she recalled the amazing folly that
had induced her to tell the secret feelings of her inmost soul to this man
almost a stranger. Whence came this miracle of influence about him, this
gift of intimacy? She felt a shock as if she had been immodest. She was
in an agony of doubt as to what he was thinking of her, and dreaded to
meet his gaze.
And yet, when he turned toward her, his whole being a smiling
compound of dark Southern blood and bone and fire, at the sound of his
voice all doubt and questioning melted.
“Do you know,” he said earnestly, “that you are the funniest, most
charming girl I ever met?”
“Thanks. I’ve heard your experience has been large for one of your age.”
Ben’s eyes danced.
“Perhaps, yes. You appeal to things in me that I didn’t know were
there—to all the senses of body and soul at once. Your strength of mind,
with its conceits, and your quick little temper seem so odd and out of
place, clothed in the gentleness of your beauty.”
“I was never more serious in my life. There are other things more
personal about you that I do not like.”
“What?”
“Your cavalier habits.”
“Cavalier fiddlesticks. There are no Cavaliers in my country. We are all
Covenanter and Huguenot folks. The idea that Southern boys are lazy
loafing dreamers is a myth. I was raised on the catechism.”
“You love to fish and hunt and frolic—you flirt with every girl you meet,
and you drink sometimes. I often feel that you are cruel and that I do not
know you.”
Ben’s face grew serious, and the red scar in the edge of his hair suddenly
became livid with the rush of blood.
“Perhaps I don’t mean that you shall know all yet,” he said slowly. “My
ideal of a man is one that leads, charms, dominates, and yet eludes. I
confess that I’m close kin to an angel and a devil, and that I await a
woman’s hand to lead me into the ways of peace and life.”
The spiritual earnestness of the girl was quick to catch the subtle appeal
of his last words. His broad, high forehead, straight, masterly nose, with
its mobile nostrils, seemed to her very manly at just that moment and
very appealing. A soft answer was on her lips.
He saw it, and leaned toward her in impulsive tenderness. A timid look
on her face caused him to sink back in silence.
They had now drifted near the city. The sun was slowly sinking in a
smother of fiery splendour that mirrored its changing hues in the still
water. The hush of the harvest fullness of autumn life was over all
nature. They passed a camp of soldiers and then a big hospital on the
banks above. A gun flashed from the hill, and the flag dropped from its
staff.
The girl’s eyes lingered on the flower in his coat a moment and then on
the red scar in the edge of his dark hair, and somehow the difference
between them seemed to melt into the falling twilight. Only his nearness
was real. Again a strange joy held her.
He threw her a look of tenderness, and she began to tremble. A sea gull
poised a moment above them and broke into a laugh.
Bending nearer, he gently took her hand, and said:
“I love you!”
A sob caught her breath and she buried her face on her arm.
“I am for you, and you are for me. Why beat your wings against the
thing that is and must be? What else matters? With all my sins and faults
my land is yours—a land of sunshine, eternal harvests, and everlasting
song, old-fashioned and provincial perhaps, but kind and hospitable.
Around its humblest cottage song birds live and mate and nest and
never leave. The winged ones of your own cold fields have heard their
call, and the sky to-night will echo with their chatter as they hurry
southward. Elsie, my own, I too have called—come; I love you!”
She lifted her face to him full of tender spiritual charm, her eyes burning
their passionate answer.
He bent and kissed her.
“Say it! Say it!” he whispered.
“I love you!” she sighed.
 CHAPTER VI
THE GAUGE OF BATTLE
The day of the first meeting of the National Congress after the war was
one of intense excitement. The galleries of the House were packed. Elsie
was there with Ben in a fever of secret anxiety lest the stirring drama
should cloud her own life. She watched her father limp to his seat with
every eye fixed on him.
The President had pursued with persistence the plan of Lincoln for the
immediate restoration of the Union. Would Congress follow the lead of
the President or challenge him to mortal combat?
Civil governments had been restored in all the Southern States, with
men of the highest ability chosen as governors and lawmakers. Their
legislatures had unanimously voted for the Thirteenth Amendment of
the Constitution abolishing slavery, and elected senators and
representatives to Congress. Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State, had
declared the new amendment a part of the organic law of the Nation by
the vote of these States.
General Grant went to the South to report its condition and boldly
declared:
“I am satisfied that the mass of thinking people of the South accept the
situation in good faith. Slavery and secession they regard as settled
forever by the highest known tribunal, and consider this decision a
fortunate one for the whole country.”
Would the Southerners be allowed to enter?
Amid breathless silence the clerk rose to call the roll of members-elect.
Every ear was bent to hear the name of the first Southern man. Not one
was called! The Master had spoken. His clerk knew how to play his part.
The next business of the House was to receive the message of the Chief
Magistrate of the Nation.
The message came, but not from the White House. It came from the seat
of the Great Commoner.
As the first thrill of excitement over the challenge to the President slowly
subsided, Stoneman rose, planted his big club foot in the middle of the
aisle, and delivered to Congress the word of its new master.
It was Ben’s first view of the man of all the world just now of most
interest. From his position he could see his full face and figure.
He began speaking in a careless, desultory way. His tone was loud yet
not declamatory, at first in a grumbling, grandfatherly, half-humorous,
querulous accent that riveted every ear instantly. A sort of drollery of a
contagious kind haunted it. Here and there a member tittered in
expectation of a flash of wit.
His figure was taller than the average, slightly bent, with a dignity
which suggested reserve power and contempt for his audience. One
knew instinctively that back of the boldest word this man might say
there was a bolder unspoken word he had chosen not to speak.
His limbs were long, and their movements slow, yet nervous as from
some internal fiery force. His hands were big and ugly, and always in
ungraceful fumbling motion as though a separate soul dwelt within
them.
The heaped-up curly profusion of his brown wig gave a weird
impression to the spread of his mobile features. His eagle-beaked nose
had three distinct lines and angles. His chin was broad and bold, and his
brows beetling and projecting. His mouth was wide, marked, and grim;
when opened, deep and cavernous; when closed, it seemed to snap so
tightly that the lower lip protruded.
Of all his make-up, his eye was the most fascinating, and it held Ben
spellbound. It could thrill to the deepest fibre of the soul that looked into
it, yet it did not gleam. It could dominate, awe, and confound, yet it
seemed to have no colour or fire. He could easily see it across the vast
hall from the galleries, yet it was not large. Two bold, colourless dagger-
points of light they seemed. As he grew excited, they darkened as if
passing under a cloud.
A sudden sweep of his huge apelike arm in an angular gesture, and the
drollery and carelessness of his voice were riven from it as by a bolt of
lightning.
He was driving home his message now in brutal frankness. Yet in the
height of his fiercest invective he never seemed to strengthen himself or
call on his resources. In its climax he was careless, conscious of power,
and contemptuous of results, as though as a gambler he had staked and
lost all and in the moment of losing suddenly become the master of
those who had beaten him.
His speech never once bent to persuade or convince. He meant to brain
the opposition with a single blow, and he did it. For he suddenly took
the breath from his foes by shouting in their faces the hidden motive of
which they were hoping to accuse him!
“Admit these Southern Representatives,” he cried, “and with the
Democrats elected from the North, within one term they will have a
majority in Congress and the Electoral College. The supremacy of our
party’s life is at stake. The man who dares palter with such a measure is
a rebel, a traitor to his party and his people.”
A cheer burst from his henchmen, and his foes sat in dazed stupor at his
audacity. He moved the appointment of a “Committee on
Reconstruction” to whom the entire government of the “conquered
provinces of the South” should be committed, and to whom all
credentials of their pretended representatives should be referred.
He sat down as the Speaker put his motion, declared it carried, and
quickly announced the names of this Imperial Committee with the Hon.
Austin Stoneman as its chairman.
He then permitted the message of the President of the United States to
be read by his clerk.
“Well, upon my soul,” said Ben, taking a deep breath and looking at
Elsie, “he’s the whole thing, isn’t he?”
The girl smiled with pride.
“Yes; he is a genius. He was born to command and yet never could resist
the cry of a child or the plea of a woman. He hates, but he hates ideas
and systems. He makes threats, yet when he meets the man who stands
for all he hates he falls in love with his enemy.”
“Then there’s hope for me?”
“Yes, but I must be the judge of the time to speak.”
“Well, if he looks at me as he did once to-day, you may have to do the
speaking also.”
“You will like him when you know him. He is one of the greatest men in
America.”
“At least he’s the father of the greatest girl in the world, which is far
more important.”
“I wonder if you know how important?” she asked seriously. “He is the
apple of my eye. His bitter words, his cynicism and sarcasm, are all on
the surface—masks that hide a great sensitive spirit. You can’t know
with what brooding tenderness I have always loved and worshipped
him. I will never marry against his wishes.”
“I hope he and I will always be good friends,” said Ben doubtfully.
“You must,” she replied, eagerly pressing his hand.
 CHAPTER VII
A WOMAN LAUGHS
Each day the conflict waxed warmer between the President and the
Commoner.
The first bill sent to the White House to Africanize the “conquered
provinces” the President vetoed in a message of such logic, dignity, and
power, the old leader found to his amazement it was impossible to rally
the two-thirds majority to pass it over his head.
At first, all had gone as planned. Lynch and Howle brought to him a
report on “Southern Atrocities,” secured through the councils of the
secret oath-bound Union League, which had destroyed the impression
of General Grant’s words and prepared his followers for blind
submission to his Committee.
Yet the rally of a group of men in defence of the Constitution had given
the President unexpected strength.
Stoneman saw that he must hold his hand on the throat of the South and
fight another campaign. Howle and Lynch furnished the publication
committee of the Union League the matter, and they printed four million
five hundred thousand pamphlets on “Southern Atrocities.”
The Northern States were hostile to negro suffrage, the first step of his
revolutionary programme, and not a dozen men in Congress had yet
dared to favour it. Ohio, Michigan, New York, and Kansas had rejected
it by overwhelming majorities. But he could appeal to their passions and
prejudices against the “Barbarism” of the South. It would work like
magic. When he had the South where he wanted it, he would turn and
ram negro suffrage and negro equality down the throats of the reluctant
North.
His energies were now bent to prevent any effective legislation in
Congress until his strength should be omnipotent.
A cloud disturbed the sky for a moment in the Senate. John Sherman, of
Ohio, began to loom on the horizon as a constructive statesman, and
without consulting him was quietly forcing over Sumner’s classic
oratory a Reconstruction Bill restoring the Southern States to the Union
on the basis of Lincoln’s plan, with no provision for interference with the
suffrage. It had gone to its last reading, and the final vote was pending.
The house was in session at 3 A. M., waiting in feverish anxiety the
outcome of this struggle in the Senate.
Old Stoneman was in his seat, fast asleep from the exhaustion of an
unbroken session of forty hours. His meals he had sent to his desk from
the Capitol restaurant. He was seventy-four years old and not in good
health, yet his energy was tireless, his resources inexhaustible, and his
audacity matchless.
Sunset Cox, the wag of the House, an opponent but personal friend of
the old Commoner, passing his seat and seeing the great head sunk on
his breast in sleep, laughed softly and said:
“Mr. Speaker!”
The presiding officer recognized the young Democrat with a nod of
answering humour and responded:
“The gentleman from New York.”
“I move you, sir,” said Cox, “that, in view of the advanced age and
eminent services of the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania, the
Sergeant-at-Arms be instructed to furnish him with enough poker chips
to last till morning!”
The scattered members who were awake roared with laughter, the
Speaker pounded furiously with his gavel, the sleepy little pages
jumped up, rubbing their eyes, and ran here and there answering
imaginary calls, and the whole House waked to its usual noise and
confusion.
The old man raised his massive head and looked to the door leading
toward the Senate just as Sumner rushed through. He had slept for a
moment, but his keen intellect had taken up the fight at precisely the
point at which he left it.
Sumner approached his desk rapidly, leaned over, and reported his
defeat and Sherman’s triumph.
“For God’s sake throttle this measure in the House or we are ruined!” he
exclaimed.
“Don’t be alarmed,” replied the cynic. “I’ll be here with stronger
weapons than articulated wind.”
“You have not a moment to lose. The bill is on its way to the Speaker’s
desk, and Sherman’s men are going to force its passage to-night.”
The Senator returned to the other end of the Capitol wrapped in the
mantle of his outraged dignity, and in thirty minutes the bill was
defeated, and the House adjourned.
As the old Commoner hobbled through the door, his crooked cane
thumping the marble floor, Sumner seized and pressed his hand:
“How did you do it?”
Stoneman’s huge jaws snapped together and his lower lip protruded:
“I sent for Cox and summoned the leader of the Democrats. I told them
if they would join with me and defeat this bill, I’d give them a better one
the next session. And I will—negro suffrage! The gudgeons swallowed it
whole!”
Sumner lifted his eyebrows and wrapped his cloak a little closer.
The Great Commoner laughed as he departed:
“He is yet too good for this world, but he’ll forget it before we’re done
this fight.”
On the steps a beggar asked him for a night’s lodging, and he tossed him
a gold eagle.
The North, which had rejected negro suffrage for itself with scorn,
answered Stoneman’s fierce appeal to their passions against the South,
and sent him a delegation of radicals eager to do his will.
So fierce had waxed the combat between the President and Congress
that the very existence of Stanton’s prisoners languishing in jail was
forgotten, and the Secretary of War himself became a football to be
kicked back and forth in this conflict of giants. The fact that Andrew
Johnson was from Tennessee, and had been an old-line Democrat before
his election as a Unionist with Lincoln, was now a fatal weakness in his
position. Under Stoneman’s assaults he became at once an executive
without a party, and every word of amnesty and pardon he proclaimed
for the South in accordance with Lincoln’s plan was denounced as the
act of a renegade courting favour of traitors and rebels.
Stanton remained in his cabinet against his wishes to insult and defy
him, and Stoneman, quick to see the way by which the President of the
Nation could be degraded and made ridiculous, introduced a bill
depriving him of the power to remove his own cabinet officers. The act
was not only meant to degrade the President; it was a trap set for his
ruin. The penalties were so fixed that its violation would give specific
ground for his trial, impeachment, and removal from office.
Again Stoneman passed his first act to reduce the “conquered
provinces” of the South to negro rule.
President Johnson vetoed it with a message of such logic in defence of
the constitutional rights of the States that it failed by one vote to find the
two-thirds majority needed to become a law without his approval.
The old Commoner’s eyes froze into two dagger-points of icy light when
this vote was announced.
With fury he cursed the President, but above all he cursed the men of his
own party who had faltered.
As he fumbled his big hands nervously, he growled:
“If I only had five men of genuine courage in Congress, I’d hang the
man at the other end of the avenue from the porch of the White House!
But I haven’t got them—cowards, dastards, dolts, and snivelling fools—
—”
His decision was instantly made. He would expel enough Democrats
from the Senate and the House to place his two-thirds majority beyond
question. The name of the President never passed his lips. He referred to
him always, even in public debate, as “the man at the other end of the
avenue,” or “the former Governor of Tennessee who once threatened
rebels—the late lamented Andrew Johnson, of blessed memory.”
He ordered the expulsion of the new member of the House from
Indiana, Daniel W. Voorhees, and the new Senator from New Jersey,
John P. Stockton. This would give him a majority of two thirds
composed of men who would obey his word without a question.
Voorhees heard of the edict with indignant wrath. He had met
Stoneman in the lobbies, where he was often the centre of admiring
groups of friends. His wit and audacity, and, above all, his brutal
frankness, had won the admiration of the “Tall Sycamore of the
Wabash.” He could not believe such a man would be a party to a
palpable fraud. He appealed to him personally:
“Look here, Stoneman,” the young orator cried with wrath, “I appeal to
your sense of honour and decency. My credentials have been accepted
by your own committee, and my seat been awarded me. My majority is
unquestioned. This is a high-handed outrage. You cannot permit this
crime.”
The old man thrust his deformed foot out before him, struck it
meditatively with his cane, and looking Voorhees straight in the eye,
boldly said:
“There’s nothing the matter with your majority, young man. I’ve no
doubt it’s all right. Unfortunately, you are a Democrat, and happen to be
the odd man in the way of the two-thirds majority on which the
supremacy of my party depends. You will have to go. Come back some
other time.” And he did.
In the Senate there was a hitch. When the vote was taken on the
expulsion of Stockton, to the amazement of the leader it was a tie.
He hobbled into the Senate Chamber, with the steel point of his cane
ringing on the marble flags as though he were thrusting it through the
vitals of the weakling who had sneaked and hedged and trimmed at the
crucial moment.
He met Howle at the door.
“What’s the matter in there?” he asked.
“They’re trying to compromise.”
“Compromise—the Devil of American politics,” he muttered. “But how
did the vote fail—it was all fixed before the roll-call?”
“Roman, of Maine, has trouble with his conscience! He is paired not to
vote on this question with Stockton’s colleague, who is sick in Trenton.
His ‘honour’ is involved, and he refuses to break his word.”
“I see,” said Stoneman, pulling his bristling brows down until his eyes
were two beads of white gleaming through them. “Tell Wade to
summon every member of the party in his room immediately and hold
the Senate in session.”
When the group of Senators crowded into the Vice-president’s room the
old man faced them leaning on his cane and delivered an address of five
minutes they never forgot.
His speech had a nameless fascination. The man himself with his
elemental passions was a wonder. He left on public record no speech
worth reading, and yet these powerful men shrank under his glance. As
the nostrils of his big three-angled nose dilated, the scream of an eagle
rang in his voice, his huge ugly hand held the crook of his cane with the
clutch of a tiger, his tongue flew with the hiss of an adder, and his big
deformed foot seemed to grip the floor as the claw of a beast.
“The life of a political party, gentlemen,” he growled in conclusion, “is
maintained by a scheme of subterfuges in which the moral law cuts no
figure. As your leader, I know but one law—success. The world is full of
fools who must have toys with which to play. A belief in politics is the
favourite delusion of shallow American minds. But you and I have no
delusions. Your life depends on this vote. If any man thinks the
abstraction called ‘honour’ is involved, let him choose between his
honour and his life! I call no names. This issue must be settled now
before the Senate adjourns. There can be no to-morrow. It is life or death.
Let the roll be called again immediately.”
The grave Senators resumed their seats, and Wade, the acting Vice-
president, again put the question to Stockton’s expulsion.
The member from New England sat pale and trembling, in his soul the
anguish of the mortal combat between his Puritan conscience, the iron
heritage of centuries, and the order of his captain.
When the Clerk of the Senate called his name, still the battle raged. He
sat in silence, the whiteness of death about his lips, while the clerk at a
signal from the Chair paused.
And then a scene the like of which was never known in American
history! August Senators crowded around his desk, begging, shouting,
imploring, and demanding that a fellow Senator break his solemn word
of honour!
For a moment pandemonium reigned.
“Vote! Vote! Call his name again!” they shouted.
High above all rang the voice of Charles Sumner, leading the wild
chorus, crying:
“Vote! Vote! Vote!”
The galleries hissed and cheered—the cheers at last drowning every
hiss.
Stoneman pushed his way among the mob which surrounded the
badgered Puritan as he attempted to retreat into the cloakroom.
“Will you vote?” he hissed, his eyes flashing poison.
“My conscience will not permit it,” he faltered.
“To hell with your conscience!” the old leader thundered. “Go back to
your seat, ask the clerk to call your name, and vote, or by the living God
I’ll read you out of the party to-night and brand you a snivelling
coward, a copperhead, a renegade, and traitor!”
Trembling from head to foot, he staggered back to his seat, the cold
sweat standing in beads on his forehead, and gasped:
“Call my name!”
The shrill voice of the clerk rang out in the stillness like the peal of a
trumpet:
“Mr. Roman!”
And the deed was done.
A cheer burst from his colleagues, and the roll-call proceeded.
When Stockton’s name was reached he sprang to his feet, voted for
himself, and made a second tie!
With blank faces they turned to the leader, who ordered Charles Sumner
to move that the Senator from New Jersey be not allowed to answer his
name on an issue involving his own seat.
It was carried. Again the roll was called, and Stockton expelled by a
majority of one.
In the moment of ominous silence which followed, a yellow woman of
sleek animal beauty leaned far over the gallery rail and laughed aloud.
The passage of each act of the Revolutionary programme over the veto
of the President was now but a matter of form. The act to degrade his
office by forcing him to keep a cabinet officer who daily insulted him,
the Civil Rights Bill, and the Freedman’s Bureau Bill followed in rapid
succession.
Stoneman’s crowning Reconstruction Act was passed, two years after
the war had closed, shattering the Union again into fragments, blotting
the names of ten great Southern States from its roll, and dividing their
territory into five Military Districts under the control of belted satraps.
When this measure was vetoed by the President, it came accompanied
by a message whose words will be forever etched in fire on the darkest
page of the Nation’s life.
Amid hisses, curses, jeers, and cat-calls, the Clerk of the House read its
burning words:
“The power thus given to the commanding officer over the people of
each district is that of an absolute monarch. His mere will is to take the
place of law. He may make a criminal code of his own; he can make it as
bloody as any recorded in history, or he can reserve the privilege of
acting on the impulse of his private passions in each case that arises.
“Here is a bill of attainer against nine millions of people at once. It is
based upon an accusation so vague as to be scarcely intelligible, and
found to be true upon no credible evidence. Not one of the nine millions
was heard in his own defence. The representatives even of the doomed
parties were excluded from all participation in the trial. The conviction
is to be followed by the most ignominious punishment ever inflicted on
large masses of men. It disfranchises them by hundreds of thousands
and degrades them all—even those who are admitted to be guiltless—
from the rank of freemen to the condition of slaves.
“Such power has not been wielded by any monarch in England for more
than five hundred years, and in all that time no people who speak the
English tongue have borne such servitude.”
When the last jeering cat-call which greeted this message of the Chief
Magistrate had died away on the floor and in the galleries, old Stoneman
rose, with a smile playing about his grim mouth, and introduced his bill
to impeach the President of the United States and remove him from
office.
 CHAPTER VIII
A DREAM
Elsie spent weeks of happiness in an abandonment of joy to the spell of
her lover. His charm was resistless. His gift of delicate intimacy, the
eloquence with which he expressed his love, and yet the manly dignity
with which he did it, threw a spell no woman could resist.
Each day’s working hours were given to his father’s case and to the
study of law. If there was work to do, he did it, and then struck the word
care from his life, giving himself body and soul to his love. Great events
were moving. The shock of the battle between Congress and the
President began to shake the Republic to its foundations. He heard
nothing, felt nothing, save the music of Elsie’s voice.
And she knew it. She had only played with lovers before. She had never
seen one of Ben’s kind, and he took her by storm. His creed was simple.
The chief end of life is to glorify the girl you love. Other things could
wait. And he let them wait. He ignored their existence.
But one cloud cast its shadow over the girl’s heart during these red-letter
days of life—the fear of what her father would do to her lover’s people.
Ben had asked her whether he must speak to him. When she said “No,
not yet,” he forgot that such a man lived. As for his politics, he knew
nothing and cared less.
But the girl knew and thought with sickening dread, until she forgot her
fears in the joy of his laughter. Ben laughed so heartily, so insinuatingly,
the contagion of his fun could not be resisted.
He would sit for hours and confess to her the secrets of his boyish
dreams of glory in war, recount his thrilling adventures and daring
deeds with such enthusiasm that his cause seemed her own, and the pity
and the anguish of the ruin of his people hurt her with the keen sense of
personal pain. His love for his native State was so genuine, his pride in
the bravery and goodness of its people so chivalrous, she began to see
for the first time how the cords which bound the Southerner to his soil
were of the heart’s red blood.
She began to understand why the war, which had seemed to her a
wicked, cruel, and causeless rebellion, was the one inevitable thing in
our growth from a loose group of sovereign States to a United Nation.
Love had given her his point of view.
Secret grief over her father’s course began to grow into conscious fear.
With unerring instinct she felt the fatal day drawing nearer when these
two men, now of her inmost life, must clash in mortal enmity.
She saw little of her father. He was absorbed with fevered activity and
deadly hate in his struggle with the President.
Brooding over her fears one night, she had tried to interest Ben in
politics. To her surprise she found that he knew nothing of her father’s
real position or power as leader of his party. The stunning tragedy of the
war had for the time crushed out of his consciousness all political ideas,
as it had for most young Southerners. He took her hand while a dreamy
look overspread his swarthy face:
“Don’t cross a bridge till you come to it. I learned that in the war. Politics
are a mess. Let me tell you something that counts——”
He felt her hand’s soft pressure and reverently kissed it. “Listen,” he
whispered. “I was dreaming last night after I left you of the home we’ll
build. Just back of our place, on the hill overlooking the river, my father
and mother planted trees in exact duplicate of the ones they placed
around our house when they were married. They set these trees in
honour of the first-born of their love, that he should make his nest there
when grown. But it was not for him. He had pitched his tent on higher
ground, and the others with him. This place will be mine. There are forty
varieties of trees, all grown—elm, maple, oak, holly, pine, cedar,
magnolia, and every fruit and flowering stem that grows in our friendly
soil. A little house, built near the vacant space reserved for the
homestead, is nicely kept by a farmer, and birds have learned to build in
every shrub and tree. All the year their music rings its chorus—one long
overture awaiting the coming of my bride——”
Elsie sighed.
“Listen, dear,” he went on eagerly. “Last night I dreamed the South had
risen from her ruins. I saw you there. I saw our home standing amid a
bower of roses your hands had planted. The full moon wrapped it in soft
light, while you and I walked hand in hand in silence beneath our trees.
But fairer and brighter than the moon was the face of her I loved, and
sweeter than all the songs of birds the music of her voice!”
A tear dimmed the girl’s warm eyes, and a deeper flush mantled her
cheeks, as she lifted her face and whispered:
“Kiss me.”
 CHAPTER IX
THE KING AMUSES HIMSELF
With savage energy the Great Commoner pressed to trial the first
impeachment of a President of the United States for high crimes and
misdemeanours.
His bill to confiscate the property of the Southern people was already
pending on the calendar of the House. This bill was the most remarkable
ever written in the English language or introduced into a legislative
body of the Aryan race. It provided for the confiscation of ninety per
cent. of the land of ten great States of the American Union. To each
negro in the South was allotted forty acres from the estate of his former
master, and the remaining millions of acres were to be divided among
the “loyal who had suffered by reason of the Rebellion.”
The execution of this, the most stupendous crime ever conceived by an
English lawmaker, involving the exile and ruin of millions of innocent
men, women, and children, could not be intrusted to Andrew Johnson.
No such measure could be enforced so long as any man was President
and Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy who claimed his title
under the Constitution. Hence the absolute necessity of his removal.
The conditions of society were ripe for this daring enterprise.
Not only was the Ship of State in the hands of revolutionists who had
boarded her in the storm stress of a civic convulsion, but among them
swarmed the pirate captains of the boldest criminals who ever figured in
the story of a nation.
The first great Railroad Lobby, with continental empires at stake,
thronged the Capitol with its lawyers, agents, barkers, and hired
courtesans.
The Cotton Thieves, who operated through a ring of Treasury agents,
had confiscated unlawfully three million bales of cotton hidden in the
South during the war and at its close, the last resource of a ruined
people. The Treasury had received a paltry twenty thousand bales for
the use of its name with which to seize alleged “property of the
Confederate Government.” The value of this cotton, stolen from the
widows and orphans, the maimed and crippled, of the South was over
$700,000,000 in gold—a capital sufficient to have started an
impoverished people again on the road to prosperity. The agents of this
ring surrounded the halls of legislation, guarding their booty from
envious eyes, and demanding the enactment of vaster schemes of legal
confiscation.
The Whiskey Ring had just been formed, and began its system of
gigantic frauds by which it scuttled the Treasury.
Above them all towered the figure of Oakes Ames, whose master mind
had organized the Crédit Mobilier steal. This vast infamy had already
eaten its way into the heart of Congress and dug the graves of many
illustrious men.
So open had become the shame that Stoneman was compelled to
increase his committees in the morning, when a corrupt majority had
been bought the night before.
He arose one day, and looking at the distinguished Speaker, who was
himself the secret associate of Oakes Ames, said:
“Mr. Speaker: while the House slept, the enemy has sown tares among
our wheat. The corporations of this country, having neither bodies to be
kicked nor souls to be lost, have, perhaps by the power of argument
alone, beguiled from the majority of my Committee the member from
Connecticut. The enemy have now a majority of one. I move to increase
the Committee to twelve.”
Speaker Colfax, soon to be hurled from the Vice-president’s chair for his
part with those thieves, increased his Committee.
Everybody knew that “the power of argument alone” meant ten
thousand dollars cash for the gentleman from Connecticut, who did not
appear on the floor for a week, fearing the scorpion tongue of the old
Commoner.
A Congress which found it could make and unmake laws in defiance of
the Executive went mad. Taxation soared to undreamed heights, while
the currency was depreciated and subject to the wildest fluctuations.
The statute books were loaded with laws that shackled chains of
monopoly on generations yet unborn. Public lands wide as the reach of
empires were voted as gifts to private corporations, and subsidies of
untold millions fixed as a charge upon the people and their children’s
children.
The demoralization incident to a great war, the waste of unheard-of
sums of money, the giving of contracts involving millions by which
fortunes were made in a night, the riot of speculation and debauchery by
those who tried to get rich suddenly without labour, had created a new
Capital of the Nation. The vulture army of the base, venal, unpatriotic,
and corrupt, which had swept down, a black cloud, in wartime to take
advantage of the misfortunes of the Nation, had settled in Washington
and gave new tone to its life.
Prior to the Civil War the Capital was ruled, and the standards of its
social and political life fixed, by an aristocracy founded on brains,
culture, and blood. Power was with few exceptions intrusted to an
honourable body of high-spirited public officials. Now a negro
electorate controlled the city government, and gangs of drunken
negroes, its sovereign citizens, paraded the streets at night firing their
muskets unchallenged and unmolested.
A new mob of onion-laden breath, mixed with perspiring African odour,
became the symbol of American Democracy.
A new order of society sprouted in this corruption. The old high-bred
ways, tastes, and enthusiasms were driven into the hiding-places of a
few families and cherished as relics of the past.
Washington, choked with scrofulous wealth, bowed the knee to the
Almighty Dollar. The new altar was covered with a black mould of
human blood—but no questions were asked.
A mulatto woman kept the house of the foremost man of the Nation and
received his guests with condescension.
In this atmosphere of festering vice and gangrene passions, the struggle
between the Great Commoner and the President on which hung the fate
of the South approached its climax.
The whole Nation was swept into the whirlpool, and business was
paralyzed. Two years after the close of a victorious war the credit of the
Republic dropped until its six per cent. bonds sold in the open market
for seventy-three cents on the dollar.
The revolutionary junta in control of the Capital was within a single step
of the subversion of the Government and the establishment of a Dictator
in the White House.
A convention was called in Philadelphia to restore fraternal feeling, heal
the wounds of war, preserve the Constitution, and restore the Union of
the fathers. It was a grand assemblage representing the heart and brain
of the Nation. Members of Lincoln’s first Cabinet, protesting Senators
and Congressmen, editors of great Republican and Democratic
newspapers, heroes of both armies, long estranged, met for a common
purpose. When a group of famous negro worshippers from Boston
suddenly entered the hall, arm in arm with ex-slaveholders from South
Carolina, the great meeting rose and walls and roof rang with thunder
peals of applause.
Their committee, headed by a famous editor, journeyed to Washington
to appeal to the Master at the Capitol. They sought him not in the White
House, but in the little Black House in an obscure street on the hill.
The brown woman received them with haughty dignity, and said:
“Mr. Stoneman cannot be seen at this hour. It is after nine o’clock. I will
submit to him your request for an audience to-morrow morning.”
“We must see him to-night,” replied the editor, with rising anger.
“The king is amusing himself,” said the yellow woman, with a touch of
malice.
“Where is he?”
Her catlike eyes rolled from side to side, and a smile played about her
full lips as she said:
“You will find him at Hall & Pemberton’s gambling hell—you’ve lived
in Washington. You know the way.”
With a muttered oath the editor turned on his heel and led his two
companions to the old Commoner’s favourite haunt. There could be no
better time or place to approach him than seated at one of its tables
laden with rare wines and savoury dishes.
On reaching the well-known number of Hall & Pemberton’s place, the
editor entered the unlocked door, passed with his friends along the soft-
carpeted hall, and ascended the stairs. Here the door was locked. A
sudden pull of the bell, and a pair of bright eyes peeped through a small
grating in the centre of the door revealed by the sliding of its panel.
The keen eyes glanced at the proffered card, the door flew open, and a
well-dressed mulatto invited them with cordial welcome to enter.
Passing along another hall, they were ushered into a palatial suite of
rooms furnished in princely state. The floors were covered with the
richest and softest carpets—so soft and yielding that the tramp of a
thousand feet could not make the faintest echo. The walls and ceilings
were frescoed by the brush of a great master, and hung with works of
art worth a king’s ransom. Heavy curtains, in colours of exquisite taste,
masked each window, excluding all sound from within or without.
The rooms blazed with light from gorgeous chandeliers of trembling
crystals, shimmering and flashing from the ceilings like bouquets of
diamonds.
Negro servants, faultlessly dressed, attended the slightest want of every
guest with the quiet grace and courtesy of the lost splendours of the old
South.
The proprietor, with courtly manners, extended his hand:
“Welcome, gentlemen; you are my guests. The tables and the wines are
at your service without price. Eat, drink, and be merry—play or not, as
you please.”
A smile lighted his dark eyes, but faded out near his mouth—cold and
rigid.
At the farther end of the last room hung the huge painting of a leopard,
so vivid and real its black and tawny colours, so furtive and wild its
restless eyes, it seemed alive and moving behind invisible bars.
Just under it, gorgeously set in its jewel-studded frame, stood the magic
green table on which men staked their gold and lost their souls.
The rooms were crowded with Congressmen, Government officials,
officers of the Army and Navy, clerks, contractors, paymasters,
lobbyists, and professional gamblers.
The centre of an admiring group was a Congressman who had during
the last session of the House broken the “bank” in a single night,
winning more than a hundred thousand dollars. He had lost it all and
more in two weeks, and the courteous proprietor now held orders for
the lion’s share of the total pay and mileage of nearly every member of
the House of Representatives.
Over that table thousands of dollars of the people’s money had been
staked and lost during the war by quartermasters, paymasters, and
agents in charge of public funds. Many a man had approached that
green table with a stainless name and left it a perjured thief. Some had
been carried out by those handsomely dressed waiters, and the man
with the cold mouth could point out, if he would, more than one stain
on the soft carpet which marked the end of a tragedy deeper than the
pen of romancer has ever sounded.
Stoneman at the moment was playing. He was rarely a heavy player, but
he had just staked a twenty-dollar gold piece and won fourteen hundred
dollars.
Howle, always at his elbow ready for a “sleeper” or a stake, said:
“Put a stack on the ace.”
He did so, lost, and repeated it twice.
“Do it again,” urged Howle. “I’ll stake my reputation that the ace wins
this time.”
With a doubting glance at Howle, old Stoneman shoved a stack of blue
chips, worth fifty dollars, over the ace, playing it to win on Howle’s
judgment and reputation. It lost.
Without the ghost of a smile, the old statesman said: “Howle, you owe
me five cents.”
As he turned abruptly on his club foot from the table, he encountered
the editor and his friends, a Western manufacturer and a Wall Street
banker. They were soon seated at a table in a private room, over a dinner
of choice oysters, diamond-back terrapin, canvas-back duck, and
champagne.
They presented their plea for a truce in his fight until popular passion
had subsided.
He heard them in silence. His answer was characteristic:
“The will of the people, gentlemen, is supreme,” he said with a sneer.
“We are the people. ‘The man at the other end of the avenue’ has dared
to defy the will of Congress. He must go. If the Supreme Court lifts a
finger in this fight, it will reduce that tribunal to one man or increase it
to twenty at our pleasure.”
“But the Constitution——” broke in the chairman.
“There are higher laws than paper compacts. We are conquerors
treading conquered soil. Our will alone is the source of law. The
drunken boor who claims to be President is in reality an alien of a
conquered province.”
“We protest,” exclaimed the man of money, “against the use of such
epithets in referring to the Chief Magistrate of the Republic!”
“And why, pray?” sneered the Commoner.
“In the name of common decency, law, and order. The President is a
man of inherent power, even if he did learn to read after his marriage.
Like many other Americans, he is a self-made man——”
“Glad to hear it,” snapped Stoneman. “It relieves Almighty God of a
fearful responsibility.”
 CHAPTER X
TOSSED BY THE STORM
As the storm of passion raised by the clash between her father and the
President rose steadily to the sweep of a cyclone, Elsie felt her own life
but a leaf driven before its fury.
Her only comfort she found in Phil, whose letters to her were full of love
for Margaret. He asked Elsie a thousand foolish questions about what
she thought of his chances.
To her own confessions he was all sympathy.
“Of father’s wild scheme of vengeance against the South,” he wrote, “I
am heartsick. I hate it on principle, to say nothing of a girl I know. I am
with General Grant for peace and reconciliation. What does your lover
think of it all? I can feel your anguish. The bill to rob the Southern
people of their land, which I hear is pending, would send your
sweetheart and mine, our enemies, into beggared exile. What will
happen in the South? Riot and bloodshed, of course—perhaps a guerilla
war of such fierce and terrible cruelty humanity sickens at the thought. I
fear the Rebellion unhinged our father’s reason on some things. He was
too old to go to the front; the cannon’s breath would have cleared the air
and sweetened his temper. But its healing was denied. I believe the
tawny leopardess who keeps his house influences him in this cruel
madness. I could wring her neck with exquisite pleasure. Why he allows
her to stay and cloud his life with her she-devil temper and fog his name
with vulgar gossip is beyond me.”
Seated in the park on the Capitol hill the day after her father had
introduced his Confiscation Bill in the House, pending the impeachment
of the President, she again attempted to draw Ben out as to his feelings
on politics.
She waited in sickening fear and bristling pride for the first burst of his
anger which would mean their separation.
“How do I feel?” he asked. “Don’t feel at all. The surrender of General
Lee was an event so stunning, my mind has not yet staggered past it.
Nothing much can happen after that, so it don’t matter.”
“Negro suffrage don’t matter?”
“No. We can manage the negro,” he said calmly.
“With thousands of your own people disfranchised?”
“The negroes will vote with us, as they worked for us during the war. If
they give them the ballot, they’ll wish they hadn’t.”
Ben looked at her tenderly, bent near, and whispered:
“Don’t waste your sweet breath talking about such things. My politics is
bounded on the North by a pair of amber eyes, on the South by a
dimpled little chin, on the East and West by a rosy cheek. Words do not
frame its speech. Its language is a mere sign, a pressure of the lips—yet
it thrills body and soul beyond all words.”
Elsie leaned closer, and looking at the Capitol, said wistfully:
“I don’t believe you know anything that goes on in that big marble
building.”
“Yes, I do.”
“What happened there yesterday?”
“You honoured it by putting your beautiful feet on its steps. I saw the
whole huge pile of cold marble suddenly glow with warm sunlight and
flash with beauty as you entered it.”
The girl nestled still closer to his side, feeling her utter helplessness in
the rapids of the Niagara through which they were being whirled by
blind and merciless forces. For the moment she forgot all fears in his
nearness and the sweet pressure of his hand.
 CHAPTER XI
THE SUPREME TEST
It is the glory of the American Republic that every man who has filled
the office of President has grown in stature when clothed with its power
and has proved himself worthy of its solemn trust. It is our highest claim
to the respect of the world and the vindication of man’s capacity to
govern himself.
The impeachment of President Andrew Johnson would mark either the
lowest tide-mud of degradation to which the Republic could sink, or its
end. In this trial our system would be put to its severest strain. If a
partisan majority in Congress could remove the Executive and defy the
Supreme Court, stability to civic institutions was at an end, and the
breath of a mob would become the sole standard of law.
Congress had thrown to the winds the last shreds of decency in its
treatment of the Chief Magistrate. Stoneman led this campaign of insult,
not merely from feelings of personal hate, but because he saw that thus
the President’s conviction before the Senate would become all but
inevitable.
When his messages arrived from the White House they were thrown
into the waste-basket without being read, amid jeers, hisses, curses, and
ribald laughter.
In lieu of their reading, Stoneman would send to the Clerk’s desk an
obscene tirade from a party newspaper, and the Clerk of the House
would read it amid the mocking groans, laughter, and applause of the
floor and galleries.
A favourite clipping described the President as “an insolent drunken
brute, in comparison with whom Caligula’s horse was respectable.”
In the Senate, whose members were to sit as sworn judges to decide the
question of impeachment, Charles Sumner used language so vulgar that
he was called to order. Sustained by the Chair and the Senate, he
repeated it with increased violence, concluding with cold venom:
“Andrew Johnson has become the successor of Jefferson Davis. In
holding him up to judgment I do not dwell on his beastly intoxication
the day he took the oath as Vice-president, nor do I dwell on his
maudlin speeches by which he has degraded the country, nor hearken to
the reports of pardons sold, or of personal corruption. These things are
bad. But he has usurped the powers of Congress.”
Conover, the perjured wretch, in prison for his crimes as a professional
witness in the assassination trial, now circulated the rumour that he
could give evidence that President Johnson was the assassin of Lincoln.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Stoneman’s henchmen sent a petition to
the President for the pardon of this villain that he might turn against the
man who had pardoned him and swear his life away! This scoundrel
was borne in triumph from prison to the Capitol and placed before the
Impeachment Committee, to whom he poured out his wondrous tale.
The sewers and prisons were dragged for every scrap of testimony to be
found, and the day for the trial approached.
As it drew nearer, excitement grew intense. Swarms of adventurers
expecting the overthrow of the Government crowded into Washington.
Dreams of honours, profits, and division of spoils held riot. Gamblers
thronged the saloons and gaming-houses, betting their gold on the
President’s head.
Stoneman found the business more serious than even his daring spirit
had dreamed. His health suddenly gave way under the strain, and he
was put to bed by his physician with the warning that the least
excitement would be instantly fatal.
Elsie entered the little Black House on the hill for the first time since her
trip at the age of twelve, some eight years before. She installed an army
nurse, took charge of the place, and ignored the existence of the brown
woman, refusing to speak to her or permit her to enter her father’s room.
His illness made it necessary to choose an assistant to conduct the case
before the High Court. There was but one member of the House whose
character and ability fitted him for the place—General Benj. F. Butler, of
Massachusetts, whose name was enough to start a riot in any assembly
in America.
His selection precipitated a storm at the Capitol. A member leaped to his
feet on the floor of the House and shouted:
“If I were to characterize all that is pusillanimous in war, inhuman in
peace, forbidden in morals, and corrupt in politics, I could name it in
one word—Butlerism!”
For this speech he was ordered to apologize, and when he refused with
scorn they voted that the Speaker publicly censure him. The Speaker did
so, but winked at the offender while uttering the censure.
John A. Bingham, of Ohio, who had been chosen for his powers of
oratory to make the principal speech against the President, rose in the
House and indignantly refused to serve on the Board of Impeachment
with such a man.
General Butler replied with crushing insolence:
“It is true, Mr. Speaker, that I may have made an error of judgment in
trying to blow up Fort Fisher with a powder ship at sea. I did the best I
could with the talents God gave me. An angel could have done no more.
At least I bared my own breast in my country’s defence—a thing the
distinguished gentleman who insults me has not ventured to do—his
only claim to greatness being that, behind prison walls, on perjured
testimony, his fervid eloquence sent an innocent American mother
screaming to the gallows.”
The fight was ended only by an order from the old Commoner’s bed to
Bingham to shut his mouth and work with Butler. When the President
had been crushed, then they could settle Kilkenny-cat issues. Bingham
obeyed.
When the august tribunal assembled in the Senate Chamber, fifty-five
Senators, presided over by Salmon P. Chase, Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court, constituted the tribunal. They took their seats in a
semicircle in front of the Vice-president’s desk at which the Chief Justice
sat. Behind them crowded the one hundred and ninety members of the
House of Representatives, the accusers of the ruler of the mightiest
Republic in human history. Every inch of space in the galleries was
crowded with brilliantly dressed men and women, army officers in
gorgeous uniforms, and the pomp and splendour of the ministers of
every foreign court of the world. In spectacular grandeur no such scene
was ever before witnessed in the annals of justice.
The peculiar personal appearance of General Butler, whose bald head
shone with insolence while his eye seemed to be winking over his record
as a warrior and making fun of his fellow-manager Bingham, added a
touch of humour to the solemn scene.
The magnificent head of the Chief Justice suggested strange thoughts to
the beholder. He had been summoned but the day before to try Jefferson
Davis for the treason of declaring the Southern States out of the Union.
To-day he sat down to try the President of the United States for
declaring them to be in the Union! He had protested with warmth that
he could not conduct both these trials at once.
The Chief Justice took oath to “do impartial justice according to the
Constitution and the laws,” and to the chagrin of Sumner administered
this oath to each Senator in turn. When Benjamin F. Wade’s name was
called, Hendricks, of Indiana, objected to his sitting as judge. He could
succeed temporarily to the Presidency, as the presiding officer of the
Senate, and his own vote might decide the fate of the accused and
determine his own succession. The law forbids the Vice-president to sit
on such trials. It should apply with more vigour in his case. Besides, he
had without a hearing already pronounced the President guilty.
Sumner, forgetting his motion to prevent Stockton’s voting against his
own expulsion, flew to the defence of Wade. Hendricks smilingly
withdrew his objection, and “Bluff Ben Wade” took the oath and sat
down to judge his own cause with unruffled front.
When the case was complete, the whole bill of indictment stood forth a
tissue of stupid malignity without a shred of evidence to support its
charges.
On the last day of the trial, when the closing speeches were being made,
there was a stir at the door. The throng of men, packing every inch of
floor space, were pushed rudely aside. The crowd craned their necks,
Senators turned and looked behind them to see what the disturbance
meant, and the Chief Justice rapped for order.
Suddenly through the dense mass appeared the forms of two gigantic
negroes carrying an old man. His grim face, white and rigid, and his big
club foot hanging pathetically from those black arms, could not be
mistaken. A thrill of excitement swept the floor and galleries, and a faint
cheer rippled the surface, quickly suppressed by the gavel.
The negroes placed him in an armchair facing the semicircle of Senators,
and crouched down on their haunches beside him. Their kinky heads,
black skin, thick lips, white teeth, and flat noses made for the moment a
curious symbolic frame for the chalk-white passion of the old
Commoner’s face.
No sculptor ever dreamed a more sinister emblem of the corruption of a
race of empire builders than this group. Its black figures, wrapped in the
night of four thousand years of barbarism, squatted there the “equal” of
their master, grinning at his forms of justice, the evolution of forty
centuries of Aryan genius. To their brute strength the white fanatic in
the madness of his hate had appealed, and for their hire he had bartered
the birthright of a mighty race of freemen.
The speaker hurried to his conclusion that the half-fainting master might
deliver his message. In the meanwhile his eyes, cold and thrilling,
sought the secrets of the souls of the judges before him.
He had not come to plead or persuade. He had eluded the vigilance of
his daughter and nurse, escaped with the aid of the brown woman and
her black allies, and at the peril of his life had come to command. Every
energy of his indomitable will he was using now to keep from fainting.
He felt that if he could but look those men in the face they would not
dare to defy his word.
He shambled painfully to his feet amid a silence that was awful. Again
the sheer wonder of the man’s personality held the imagination of the
audience. His audacity, his fanaticism, and the strange contradictions of
his character stirred the mind of friend and foe alike—this man who
tottered there before them, holding off Death with his big ugly left hand,
while with his right he clutched at the throat of his foe! Honest and
dishonest, cruel and tender, great and mean, a party leader who scorned
public opinion, a man of conviction, yet the most unscrupulous
politician, a philosopher who preached the equality of man, yet a tyrant
who hated the world and despised all men!
His very presence before them an open defiance of love and life and
death, would not his word ring omnipotent when the verdict was
rendered? Every man in the great courtroom believed it as he looked on
the rows of Senators hanging on his lips.
He spoke at first with unnatural vigour, a faint flush of fever lighting his
white face, his voice quivering yet penetrating.
“Upon that man among you who shall dare to acquit the President,” he
boldly threatened, “I hurl the everlasting curse of a Nation—an infamy
that shall rive and blast his children’s children until they shrink from
their own name as from the touch of pollution!”
He gasped for breath, his restless hands fumbled at his throat, he
staggered and would have fallen had not his black guards caught him.
He revived, pushed them back on their haunches, and sat down. And
then, with his big club foot thrust straight in front of him, his gnarled
hands gripping the arms of his chair, the massive head shaking back and
forth like a wounded lion, he continued his speech, which grew in fierce
intensity with each laboured breath.
The effect was electrical. Every Senator leaned forward to catch the
lowest whisper, and so awful was the suspense in the galleries the
listeners grew faint.
When this last mad challenge was hurled into the teeth of the judges, the
dazed crowd paused for breath and the galleries burst into a storm of
applause.
In vain the Chief Justice rose, his lionlike face livid with anger, pounded
for order, and commanded the galleries to be cleared.
They laughed at him. Roar after roar was the answer. The Chief Justice
in loud angry tones ordered the Sergeant-at-Arms to clear the galleries.
Men leaned over the rail and shouted in his face:
“He can’t do it!”
“He hasn’t got men enough!”
“Let him try if he dares!”
The doorkeepers attempted to enforce order by announcing it in the
name of the peace and dignity and sovereign power of the Senate over
its sacred chamber. The crowd had now become a howling mob which
jeered them.
Senator Grimes, of Iowa, rose and demanded the reason why the Senate
was thus insulted and the order had not been enforced.
A volley of hisses greeted his question.
The Chief Justice, evidently quite nervous, declared the order would be
enforced.
Senator Trumbull, of Illinois, moved that the offenders be arrested.
In reply the crowd yelled:
“We’d like to see you do it!”
At length the mob began to slowly leave the galleries under the
impression that the High Court had adjourned.
Suddenly a man cried out:
“Hold on! They ain’t going to adjourn. Let’s see it out!”
Hundreds took their seats again. In the corridors a crowd began to sing
in wild chorus:
“Old Grimes is dead, that poor old man.” The women joined with glee.
Between the verses the leader would curse the Iowa Senator as a traitor
and copperhead. The singing could be distinctly heard by the Court as
its roar floated through the open doors.
When the Senate Chamber had been cleared and the most disgraceful
scene that ever occurred within its portals had closed, the High Court
Impeachment went into secret session to consider the evidence and its
verdict.
Within an hour from its adjournment it was known to the Managers that
seven Republican Senators were doubtful, and that they formed a group
under the leadership of two great constitutional lawyers who still
believed in the sanctity of a judge’s oath—Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois,
and William Pitt Fessenden, of Maine. Around them had gathered
Senators Grimes, of Iowa, Van Winkle, of West Virginia, Fowler, of
Tennessee, Henderson, of Missouri, and Ross, of Kansas. The Managers
were in a panic. If these men dared to hold together with the twelve
Democrats, the President would be acquitted by one vote—they could
count thirty-four certain for conviction.
The Revolutionists threw to the winds the last scruple of decency, went
into caucus and organized a conspiracy for forcing, within the few days
which must pass before the verdict, these judges to submit to their
decree.
Fessenden and Trumbull were threatened with impeachment and
expulsion from the Senate and bombarded by the most furious assaults
from the press, which denounced them as infamous traitors, “as mean,
repulsive, and noxious as hedgehogs in the cages of a travelling
menagerie.”
A mass meeting was held in Washington which said:
“Resolved, that we impeach Fessenden, Trumbull, and Grimes at the bar
of justice and humanity, as traitors before whose guilt the infamy of
Benedict Arnold becomes respectability and decency.”
The Managers sent out a circular telegram to every State from which
came a doubtful judge:
“Great danger to the peace of the country if impeachment fails. Send
your Senators public opinion by resolutions, letters, and delegates.”
The man who excited most wrath was Ross, of Kansas. That Kansas of
all States should send a “traitor” was more than the spirits of the
Revolutionists could bear.
A mass meeting in Leavenworth accordingly sent him the telegram:
“Kansas has heard the evidence and demands the conviction of the
President.
“D. R. ANTHONY and 1,000 others.”
To this Ross replied:
“I have taken an oath to do impartial justice. I trust I shall have the
courage and honesty to vote according to the dictates of my judgment
and for the highest good of my country.”
He got his answer:
“Your motives are Indian contracts and greenbacks. Kansas repudiates
you as she does all perjurers and skunks.”
The Managers organized an inquisition for the purpose of torturing and
badgering Ross into submission. His one vote was all they lacked.
They laid siege to little Vinnie Ream, the sculptress, to whom Congress
had awarded a contract for the statue of Lincoln. Her studio was in the
crypt of the Capitol. They threatened her with the wrath of Congress,
the loss of her contract, and ruin of her career unless she found a way to
induce Senator Ross, whom she knew, to vote against the President.
Such an attempt to gain by fraud the verdict of a common court of law
would have sent its promoters to prison for felony. Yet the Managers of
this case, before the highest tribunal of the world, not only did it without
a blush of shame, but cursed as a traitor every man who dared to
question their motives.
As the day approached for the Court to vote, Senator Ross remained to
friend and foe a sealed mystery. Reporters swarmed about him, the
target of a thousand eyes. His rooms were besieged by his radical
constituents who had been imported from Kansas in droves to browbeat
him into a promise to convict. His movements day and night, his
breakfast, his dinner, his supper, the clothes he wore, the colour of his
cravat, his friends and companions, were chronicled in hourly bulletins
and flashed over the wires from the delirious Capital.
Chief Justice Chase called the High Court of Impeachment to order, to
render its verdict. Old Stoneman had again been carried to his chair in
the arms of two negroes, and sat with his cold eyes searching the faces of
the judges.
The excitement had reached the highest pitch of intensity. A sense of
choking solemnity brooded over the scene. The feeling grew that the
hour had struck which would test the capacity of man to establish an
enduring Republic.
The Clerk read the Eleventh Article, drawn by the Great Commoner as
the supreme test.
As its last words died away the Chief Justice rose amid a silence that
was agony, placed his hands on the sides of the desk as if to steady
himself, and said:
“Call the roll.”
Each Senator answered “Guilty” or “Not Guilty,” exactly as they had
been counted by the Managers, until Fessenden’s name was called.
A moment of stillness and the great lawyer’s voice rang high, cold, clear,
and resonant as a Puritan church bell on Sunday morning:
“Not Guilty!”
A murmur, half groan and sigh, half cheer and cry, rippled the great
hall.
The other votes were discounted now save that of Edmund G. Ross, of
Kansas. No human being on earth knew what this man would do save
the silent invisible man within his soul.
Over the solemn trembling silence the voice of the Chief Justice rang:
“Senator Ross, how say you? Is the respondent, Andrew Johnson, guilty
or not guilty of a high misdemeanor as charged in this article?”
The great Judge bent forward; his brow furrowed as Ross arose.
His fellow Senators watched him spellbound. A thousand men and
women, hanging from the galleries, focused their eyes on him. Old
Stoneman drew his bristling brows down, watching him like an adder
ready to strike, his lower lip protruding, his jaws clinched as a vise, his
hands fumbling the arms of his chair.
Every breath is held, every ear strained, as the answer falls from the
sturdy Scotchman like the peal of a trumpet:
“Not Guilty!”
The crowd breathes—a pause, a murmur, the shuffle of a thousand
feet——
The President is acquitted, and the Republic lives!
The House assembled and received the report of the verdict. Old
Stoneman pulled himself half erect, holding to his desk, addressed the
Speaker, introduced his second bill for the impeachment of the
President, and fell fainting in the arms of his black attendants.
 CHAPTER XII
TRIUMPH IN DEFEAT
Upon the failure to convict the President, Edwin M. Stanton resigned,
sank into despair and died, and a soldier Secretary of War opened the
prison doors.
Ben Cameron and his father hurried Southward to a home and land
passing under a cloud darker than the dust and smoke of blood-soaked
battlefields—the Black Plague of Reconstruction.
For two weeks the old Commoner wrestled in silence with Death. When
at last he spoke, it was to the stalwart negroes who had called to see him
and were standing by his bedside.
Turning his deep-sunken eyes on them a moment, he said slowly:
“I wonder whom I’ll get to carry me when you boys die!”
Elsie hurried to his side and kissed him tenderly. For a week his mind
hovered in the twilight that lies between time and eternity. He seemed
to forget the passions and fury of his fierce career and live over the
memories of his youth, recalling pathetically its bitter poverty and its
fair dreams. He would lie for hours and hold Elsie’s hand, pressing it
gently.
In one of his lucid moments he said:
“How beautiful you are, my child! You shall be a queen. I’ve dreamed of
boundless wealth for you and my boy. My plans are Napoleonic—and I
shall not fail—never fear—aye, beyond the dreams of avarice!”
“I wish no wealth save the heart treasure of those I love, father,” was the
soft answer.
“Of course, little day-dreamer. But the old cynic who has outlived
himself and knows the mockery of time and things will be wisdom for
your foolishness. You shall keep your toys. What pleases you shall
please me. Yet I will be wise for us both.”
She laid her hand upon his lips, and he kissed the warm little fingers.
In these days of soul-nearness the iron heart softened as never before in
love toward his children. Phil had hurried home from the West and
secured his release from the remaining weeks of his term of service.
As the father lay watching them move about the room, the cold light in
his deep-set wonderful eyes would melt into a soft glow.
As he grew stronger, the old fierce spirit of the unconquered leader
began to assert itself. He would take up the fight where he left it off and
carry it to victory.
Elsie and Phil sent the doctor to tell him the truth and beg him to quit
politics.
“Your work is done; you have but three months to live unless you go
South and find new life,” was the verdict.
“In either event I go to a warmer climate, eh, doctor?” said the cynic.
“Perhaps,” was the laughing reply.
“Good. It suits me better. I’ve had the move in mind. I can do more
effective work in the South for the next two years. Your decision is fate.
I’ll go at once.”
The doctor was taken aback.
“Come now,” he said persuasively. “Let a disinterested Englishman give
you some advice. You’ve never taken any before. I give it as medicine,
and I won’t put it on your bill. Slow down on politics. Your recent defeat
should teach you a lesson in conservatism.”
The old Commoner’s powerful mouth became rigid, and the lower lip
bulged:
“Conservatism—fossil putrefaction!”
“But defeat?”
“Defeat?” cried the old man. “Who said I was defeated? The South lies
in ashes at my feet—the very names of her proud States blotted from
history. The Supreme Court awaits my nod. True, there’s a man
boarding in the White House, and I vote to pay his bills; but the page
who answers my beck and call has more power. Every measure on
which I’ve set my heart is law, save one—my Confiscation Act—and this
but waits the fulness of time.”
The doctor, who was walking back and forth with his hands folded
behind him, paused and said:
“I marvel that a man of your personal integrity could conceive such a
measure; you, who refused to accept the legal release of your debts until
the last farthing was paid—you, whose cruelty of the lip is hideous, and
yet beneath it so gentle a personality, I’ve seen the pages in the House
stand at your back and mimic you while speaking, secure in the smile
with which you turned to greet their fun. And yet you press this crime
upon a brave and generous foe?”
“A wrong can have no rights,” said Stoneman calmly. “Slavery will not
be dead until the landed aristocracy on which it rested is destroyed. I am
not cruel or unjust. I am but fulfilling the largest vision of universal
democracy that ever stirred the soul of man—a democracy that shall
know neither rich nor poor, bond nor free, white nor black. If I use the
wild pulse-beat of the rage of millions, it is only a means to an end—this
grander vision of the soul.”
“Then why not begin at home this vision, and give the stricken South a
moment to rise?”
“No. The North is impervious to change, rich, proud, and unscathed by
war. The South is in chaos and cannot resist. It is but the justice and
wisdom of Heaven that the negro shall rule the land of his bondage. It is
the only solution of the race problem. Lincoln’s contention that we could
not live half white and half black is sound at the core. When we
proclaim equality, social, political, and economic for the negro, we mean
always to enforce it in the South. The negro will never be treated as an
equal in the North. We are simply a set of cold-blooded liars on that
subject, and always have been. To the Yankee the very physical touch of
a negro is pollution.”
“Then you don’t believe this twaddle about equality?” asked the doctor.
“Yes and no. Mankind in the large is a herd of mercenary gudgeons or
fools. As a lawyer in Pennsylvania I have defended fifty murderers on
trial for their lives. Forty-nine of them were guilty. All these I succeeded
in acquitting. One of them was innocent. This one they hung. Can a man
keep his face straight in such a world? Could negro blood degrade such
stock? Might not an ape improve it? I preach equality as a poet and seer
who sees a vision beyond the rim of the horizon of to-day.”
The old man’s eyes shone with the set stare of a fanatic.
“And you think the South is ready for this wild vision?”
“Not ready, but helpless to resist. As a cold-blooded, scientific
experiment, I mean to give the Black Man one turn at the Wheel of Life.
It is an act of just retribution. Besides, in my plans I need his vote; and
that settles it.”
“But will your plans work? Your own reports show serious trouble in
the South already.”
Stoneman laughed.
“I never read my own reports. They are printed in molasses to catch
flies. The Southern legislatures played into my hands by copying the
laws of New England relating to Servants, Masters, Apprentices, and
Vagrants. But even these were repealed at the first breath of criticism.
Neither the Freedman’s Bureau nor the army has ever loosed its grip on
the throat of the South for a moment. These disturbances and ‘atrocities’
are dangerous only when printed on campaign fly-paper.”
“And how will you master and control these ten great Southern States?”
“Through my Reconstruction Acts by means of the Union League. As a
secret between us, I am the soul of this order. I organized it in 1863 to
secure my plan of confiscation. We pressed it on Lincoln. He repudiated
it. We nominated Frémont at Cleveland against Lincoln in ’64, and tried
to split the party or force Lincoln to retire. Frémont, a conceited ass,
went back on this plank in our platform, and we dropped him and
helped elect Lincoln again.”
“I thought the Union League a patriotic and social organization?” said
the doctor in surprise.
“It has these features, but its sole aim as a secret order is to confiscate the
property of the South. I will perfect this mighty organization until every
negro stands drilled in serried line beneath its banners, send a solid
delegation here to do my bidding, and return at the end of two years
with a majority so overwhelming that my word will be law. I will pass
my Confiscation Bill. If Ulysses S. Grant, the coming idol, falters, my
second bill of Impeachment will only need the change of a name.”
The doctor shook his head.
“Give up this madness. Your life is hanging by a thread. The Southern
people even in their despair will never drink this black broth you are
pressing to their lips.”
“They’ve got to drink it.”
“Your decision is unalterable?”
“Absolutely. It’s the breath I breathe. As my physician you may select
the place to which I shall be banished. It must be reached by rail and
wire. I care not its name or size. I’ll make it the capital of the Nation.
There’ll be poetic justice in setting up my establishment in a fallen
slaveholder’s mansion.”
The doctor looked intently at the old man:
“The study of men has become a sort of passion with me, but you are the
deepest mystery I’ve yet encountered in this land of surprises.”
“And why?” asked the cynic.
“Because the secret of personality resides in motives, and I can’t find
yours either in your actions or words.”
Stoneman glanced at him sharply from beneath his wrinkled brows and
snapped.
“Keep on guessing.”
“I will. In the meantime I’m going to send you to the village of
Piedmont, South Carolina. Your son and daughter both seem
enthusiastic over this spot.”
“Good; that settles it. And now that mine own have been conspiring
against me,” said Stoneman confidentially, “a little guile on my part. Not
a word of what has passed between us to my children. Tell them I agree
with your plans and give up my work. I’ll give the same story to the
press—I wish nothing to mar their happiness while in the South. My
secret burdens need not cloud their young lives.”
Dr. Barnes took the old man by the hand:
“I promise. My assistant has agreed to go with you. I’ll say good-bye. It’s
an inspiration to look into a face like yours, lit by the splendour of an
unconquerable will! But I want to say something to you before you set
out on this journey.”
“Out with it,” said the Commoner.
“The breed to which the Southern white man belongs has conquered
every foot of soil on this earth their feet have pressed for a thousand
years. A handful of them hold in subjection three hundred millions in
India. Place a dozen of them in the heart of Africa, and they will rule the
continent unless you kill them——”
“Wait,” cried Stoneman, “until I put a ballot in the hand of every negro
and a bayonet at the breast of every white man from the James to the Rio
Grande!”
“I’ll tell you a little story,” said the doctor with a smile. “I once had a
half-grown eagle in a cage in my yard. The door was left open one day,
and a meddlesome rooster hopped in to pick a fight. The eagle had been
sick a week and seemed an easy mark. I watched. The rooster jumped
and wheeled and spurred and picked pieces out of his topknot. The
young eagle didn’t know at first what he meant. He walked around
dazed, with a hurt expression. When at last it dawned on him what the
chicken was about, he simply reached out one claw, took the rooster by
the neck, planted the other claw in his breast, and snatched his head
off.”
The old man snapped his massive jaws together and grunted
contemptuously.
 Book III—The Reign of Terror
CHAPTER I
A FALLEN SLAVEHOLDER’S MANSION
Piedmont, South Carolina, which Elsie and Phil had selected for reasons
best known to themselves as the place of retreat for their father, was a
favourite summer resort of Charleston people before the war.
Ulster county, of which this village was the capital, bordered on the
North Carolina line, lying alongside the ancient shore of York. It was
settled by the Scotch folk who came from the North of Ireland in the
great migrations which gave America three hundred thousand people of
Covenanter martyr blood, the largest and most important addition to
our population, larger in number than either the Puritans of New
England or the so-called Cavaliers of Virginia and Eastern Carolina; and
far more important than either, in the growth of American nationality.
To a man they had hated Great Britain. Not a Tory was found among
them. The cries of their martyred dead were still ringing in their souls
when George III started on his career of oppression. The fiery words of
Patrick Henry, their spokesman in the valley of Virginia, had swept the
aristocracy of the Old Dominion into rebellion against the King and on
into triumphant Democracy. They had made North Carolina the first
home of freedom in the New World, issued the first Declaration of
Independence in Mecklenburg, and lifted the first banner of rebellion
against the tyranny of the Crown.
They grew to the soil wherever they stopped, always home lovers and
home builders, loyal to their own people, instinctive clan leaders and
clan followers. A sturdy, honest, covenant-keeping, God-fearing,
fighting people, above all things they hated sham and pretence. They
never boasted of their families, though some of them might have
quartered the royal arms of Scotland on their shields.
To these sturdy qualities had been added a strain of Huguenot
tenderness and vivacity.
The culture of cotton as the sole industry had fixed African slavery as
their economic system. With the heritage of the Old World had been
blended forces inherent in the earth and air of the new Southland,
something of the breath of its unbroken forests, the freedom of its
untrod mountains, the temper of its sun, and the sweetness of its tropic
perfumes.
When Mrs. Cameron received Elsie’s letter, asking her to secure for them
six good rooms at the “Palmetto” hotel, she laughed. The big rambling
hostelry had been burned by roving negroes, pigs were wallowing in the
sulphur springs, and along its walks, where lovers of olden days had
strolled, the cows were browsing on the shrubbery.
But she laughed for a more important reason. They had asked for a six-
room cottage if accommodations could not be had in the hotel.
She could put them in the Lenoir place. The cotton crop from their farm
had been stolen from the gin—the cotton tax of $200 could not be paid,
and a mortgage was about to be foreclosed on both their farm and home.
She had been brooding over their troubles in despair. The Stonemans’
coming was a godsend.
Mrs. Cameron was helping them set the house in order to receive the
new tenants.
“I declare,” said Mrs. Lenoir gratefully. “It seems too good to be true.
Just as I was about to give up—the first time in my life—here came those
rich Yankees and with enough rent to pay the interest on the mortgages
and our board at the hotel. I’ll teach Margaret to paint, and she can give
Marion lessons on the piano. The darkest hour’s just before day. And
last week I cried when they told me I must lose the farm.”
“I was heartsick over it for you.”
“You know, the farm was my dowry with the dozen slaves Papa gave us
on our wedding-day. The negroes did as they pleased, yet we managed
to live and were very happy.”
Marion entered and placed a bouquet of roses on the table, touching
them daintily until she stood each flower apart in careless splendour.
Their perfume, the girl’s wistful dreamy blue eyes and shy elusive
beauty, all seemed a part of the warm sweet air of the June morning.
Mrs. Lenoir watched her lovingly.
“Mamma, I’m going to put flowers in every room. I’m sure they haven’t
such lovely ones in Washington,” said Marion eagerly, as she skipped
out.
The two women moved to the open window, through which came the
drone of bees and the distant music of the river falls.
“Marion’s greatest charm,” whispered her mother, “is in her way of
doing things easily and gently without a trace of effort. Watch her bend
over to get that rose. Did you ever see anything like the grace and
symmetry of her figure—she seems a living flower!”
“Jeannie, you’re making an idol of her——”
“Why not? With all our troubles and poverty, I’m rich in her! She’s
fifteen years old, her head teeming with romance. You know, I was
married at fifteen. There’ll be a half dozen boys to see her to-night in our
new home—all of them head over heels in love with her.”
“Oh, Jeannie, you must not be so silly! We should worship God only.”
“Isn’t she God’s message to me and to the world?”
“But if anything should happen to her——”
The young mother laughed. “I never think of it. Some things are fixed.
Her happiness and beauty are to me the sign of God’s presence.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re coming to live with us in the heart of town. This
place is a cosey nest, just such a one as a poet lover would build here in
the edge of these deep woods, but it is too far out for you to be alone. Dr.
Cameron has been worrying about you ever since he came home.”
“I’m not afraid of the negroes. I don’t know one of them who wouldn’t
go out of his way to do me a favour. Old Aleck is the only rascal I know
among them, and he’s too busy with politics now even to steal a
chicken.”
“And Gus, the young scamp we used to own; you haven’t forgotten
him? He is back here, a member of the company of negro troops, and
parades before the house every day to show off his uniform. Dr.
Cameron told him yesterday he’d thrash him if he caught him hanging
around the place again. He frightened Margaret nearly to death when
she went to the barn to feed her horse.”
“I’ve never known the meaning of fear. We used to roam the woods and
fields together all hours of the day and night: my lover, Marion, and I.
This panic seems absurd to me.”
“Well, I’ll be glad to get you two children under my wing. I was afraid
I’d find you in tears over moving from your nest.”
“No, where Marion is I’m at home, and I’ll feel I’ve a mother when I get
with you.”
“Will you come to the hotel before they arrive?”
“No; I’ll welcome and tell them how glad I am they have brought me
good luck.”
“I’m delighted, Jeannie. I wished you to do this, but I couldn’t ask it. I
can never do enough for this old man’s daughter. We must make their
stay happy. They say he’s a terrible old Radical politician, but I suppose
he’s no meaner than the others. He’s very ill, and she loves him
devotedly. He is coming here to find health, and not to insult us.
Besides, he was kind to me. He wrote a letter to the President. Nothing
that I have will be too good for him or for his. It’s very brave and sweet
of you to stay and meet them.”
“I’m doing it to please Marion. She suggested it last night, sitting out on
the porch in the twilight. She slipped her arm around me and said:
“‘Mamma, we must welcome them and make them feel at home. He is
very ill. They will be tired and homesick. Suppose it were you and I, and
we were taking my Papa to a strange place.’”
When the Stonemans arrived, the old man was too ill and nervous from
the fatigue of the long journey to notice his surroundings or to be
conscious of the restful beauty of the cottage into which they carried
him. His room looked out over the valley of the river for miles, and the
glimpse he got of its broad fertile acres only confirmed his ideas of the
“slaveholding oligarchy” it was his life-purpose to crush. Over the
mantel hung a steel engraving of Calhoun. He fell asleep with his deep,
sunken eyes resting on it and a cynical smile playing about his grim
mouth.
Margaret and Mrs. Cameron had met the Stonemans and their physician
at the train, and taken Elsie and her father in the old weather-beaten
family carriage to the Lenoir cottage, apologising for Ben’s absence.
“He has gone to Nashville on some important legal business, and the
doctor is ailing, but as the head of the clan Cameron he told me to
welcome your father to the hospitality of the county, and beg him to let
us know if he could be of help.”
The old man, who sat in a stupor of exhaustion, made no response, and
Elsie hastened to say:
“We appreciate your kindness more than I can tell you, Mrs. Cameron. I
trust father will be better in a day or two, when he will thank you. The
trip has been more than he could bear.”
“I am expecting Ben home this week,” the mother whispered. “I need
not tell you that he will be delighted at your coming.”
Elsie smiled and blushed.
“And I’ll expect Captain Stoneman to see me very soon,” said Margaret
softly. “You will not forget to tell him for me?”
“He’s a very retiring young man,” said Elsie, “and pretends to be busy
about our baggage just now. I’m sure he will find the way.”
Elsie fell in love at sight with Marion and her mother. Their easy genial
manners, the genuineness of their welcome, and the simple kindness
with which they sought to make her feel at home put her heart into a
warm glow.
Mrs. Lenoir explained the conveniences of the place and apologized for
its defects, the results of the war.
“I am sorry about the window curtains—we have used them all for
dresses. Marion is a genius with a needle, and we took the last pair out
of the parlour to make a dress for a birthday party. The year before, we
used the ones in my room for a costume at a starvation party in a benefit
for our rector—you know we’re Episcopalians—strayed up here for our
health from Charleston among these good Scotch Presbyterians.”
“We will soon place curtains at the windows,” said Elsie cheerfully.
“The carpets were sent to the soldiers for blankets during the war. It was
all we could do for our poor boys, except to cut my hair and sell it. You
see my hair hasn’t grown out yet. I sent it to Richmond the last year of
the war. I felt I must do something when my neighbours were giving so
much. You know Mrs. Cameron lost four boys.”
“I prefer the floors bare,” Elsie replied. “We will get a few rugs.”
She looked at the girlish hair hanging in ringlets about Mrs. Lenoir’s
handsome face, smiled pathetically, and asked:
“Did you really make such sacrifices for your cause?”
“Yes, indeed. I was glad when the war was ended for some things. We
certainly needed a few pins, needles, and buttons, to say nothing of a
cup of coffee or tea.”
“I trust you will never lack for anything again,” said Elsie kindly.
“You will bring us good luck,” Mrs. Lenoir responded. “Your coming is
so fortunate. The cotton tax Congress levied was so heavy this year we
were going to lose everything. Such a tax when we are all about to
starve! Dr. Cameron says it was an act of stupid vengeance on the South,
and that no other farmers in America have their crops taxed by the
National Government. I am so glad your father has come. He is not
hunting for an office. He can help us, maybe.”
“I am sure he will,” answered Elsie thoughtfully.
Marion ran up the steps lightly, her hair dishevelled and face flushed.
“Now, Mamma, it’s almost sundown; you get ready to go. I want her
awhile to show her about my things.”
She took Elsie shyly by the hand and led her into the lawn, while her
mother paid a visit to each room, and made up the last bundle of odds
and ends she meant to carry to the hotel.
“I hope you will love the place as we do,” said the girl simply.
“I think it very beautiful and restful,” Elsie replied. “This wilderness of
flowers looks like fairyland. You have roses running on the porch
around the whole length of the house.”
“Yes, Papa was crazy over the trailing roses, and kept planting them
until the house seems just a frame built to hold them, with a roof on it.
But you can see the river through the arches from three sides. Ben
Cameron helped me set that big beauty on the south corner the day he
ran away to the war——”
“The view is glorious!” Elsie exclaimed, looking in rapture over the river
valley.
The village of Piedmont crowned an immense hill on the banks of the
Broad River, just where it dashes over the last stone barrier in a series of
beautiful falls and spreads out in peaceful glory through the plains
toward Columbia and the distant sea. The muffled roar of these falls,
rising softly through the trees on its wooded cliff, held the daily life of
the people in the spell of distant music. In fair weather it soothed and
charmed, and in storm and freshet rose to the deep solemn growl of
thunder.
The river made a sharp bend as it emerged from the hills and flowed
westward for six miles before it turned south again. Beyond this six-mile
sweep of its broad channel loomed the three ranges of the Blue Ridge
Mountains, the first one dark, rich, distinct, clothed in eternal green, the
last one melting in dim lines into the clouds and soft azure of the sky.
As the sun began to sink now behind these distant peaks, each cloud
that hung about them burst into a blazing riot of colour. The silver
mirror of the river caught their shadows, and the water glowed in
sympathy.
As Elsie drank the beauty of the scene, the music of the falls ringing its
soft accompaniment, her heart went out in a throb of love and pity for
the land and its people.
“Can you blame us for loving such a spot?” said Marion. “It’s far more
beautiful from the cliff at Lover’s Leap. I’ll take you there some day. My
father used to tell me that this world was Heaven, and that the spirits
would all come back to live here when sin and shame and strife were
gone.”
“Are your father’s poems published?” asked Elsie.
“Only in the papers. We have them clipped and pasted in a scrapbook.
I’ll show you the one about Ben Cameron some day. You met him in
Washington, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Elsie quietly.
“Then I know he made love to you.”
“Why?”
“You’re so pretty. He couldn’t help it.”
“Does he make love to every pretty girl?”
“Always. It’s his religion. But he does it so beautifully you can’t help
believing it, until you compare notes with the other girls.”
“Did he make love to you?”
“He broke my heart when he ran away. I cried a whole week. But I got
over it. He seemed so big and grown when he came home this last time.
I was afraid to let him kiss me.”
“Did he dare to try?”
“No, and it hurt my feelings. You see, I’m not quite old enough to be
serious with the big boys, and he looked so brave and handsome with
that ugly scar on the edge of his forehead, and everybody was so proud
of him. I was just dying to kiss him, and I thought it downright mean in
him not to offer it.”
“Would you have let him?”
“I expected him to try.”
“He is very popular in Piedmont?”
“Every girl in town is in love with him.”
“And he in love with all?”
“He pretends to be—but between us, he’s a great flirt. He’s gone to
Nashville now on some pretended business. Goodness only knows
where he got the money to go. I believe there’s a girl there.”
“Why?”
“Because he was so mysterious about his trip. I’ll keep an eye on him at
the hotel. You know Margaret, too, don’t you?”
“Yes; we met her in Washington.”
“Well, she’s the slyest flirt in town—it runs in the blood—has a half-
dozen beaux to see her every day. She plays the organ in the
Presbyterian Sunday school, and the young minister is dead in love with
her. They say they are engaged. I don’t believe it. I think it’s another one.
But I must hurry, I’ve so much to show and tell you. Come here to the
honeysuckle——”
Marion drew the vines apart from the top of the fence and revealed a
mocking-bird on her nest.
“She’s setting. Don’t let anything hurt her. I’d push her off and show
you her speckled eggs, but it’s so late.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t hurt her for the world!” cried Elsie with delight.
“And right here,” said Marion, bending gracefully over a tall bunch of
grass, “is a pee-wee’s nest, four darling little eggs; look out for that.”
Elsie bent and saw the pretty nest perched on stems of grass, and over it
the taller leaves drawn to a point.
“Isn’t it cute!” she murmured.
“Yes; I’ve six of these and three mocking-bird nests. I’ll show them to
you. But the most particular one of all is the wren’s nest in the fork of
the cedar, close to the house.”
She led Elsie to the tree, and about two feet from the ground, in the forks
of the trunk, was a tiny hole from which peeped the eyes of a wren.
“Whatever you do, don’t let anything hurt her. Her mate sings ‘Free-
nigger! Free-nigger! Free-nigger!’ every morning in this cedar.”
“And you think we will specially enjoy that?” asked Elsie, laughing.
“Now, really,” cried Marion, taking Elsie’s hand, “you know I couldn’t
think of such a mean joke. I forgot you were from the North. You seem
so sweet and homelike. He really does sing that way. You will hear him
in the morning, bright and early, ‘Free-nigger! Free-nigger! Free-nigger!’
just as plain as I’m saying it.”
“And did you learn to find all these birds’ nests by yourself?”
“Papa taught me. I’ve got some jay-birds and some cat-birds so gentle
they hop right down at my feet. Some people hate jay-birds. But I like
them, they seem to be having such a fine time and enjoy life so. You
don’t mind jay-birds, do you?”
“I love every bird that flies.”
“Except hawks and owls and buzzards——”
“Well, I’ve seen so few I can’t say I’ve anything particular against them.”
“Yes, they eat chickens—except the buzzards, and they’re so ugly and
filthy. Now, I’ve a chicken to show you—please don’t let Aunt Cindy—
she’s to be your cook—please don’t let her kill him—he’s crippled—has
something the matter with his foot. He was born that way. Everybody
wanted to kill him, but I wouldn’t let them. I’ve had an awful time
raising him, but he’s all right now.”
Marion lifted a box and showed her the lame pet, softly clucking his
protest against the disturbance of his rest.
“I’ll take good care of him, never fear,” said Elsie, with a tremor in her
voice.
“And I have a queer little black cat I wanted to show you, but he’s gone
off somewhere. I’d take him with me—only it’s bad luck to move cats.
He’s awful wild—won’t let anybody pet him but me. Mamma says he’s
an imp of Satan—but I love him. He runs up a tree when anybody else
tries to get him. But he climbs right up on my shoulder. I never loved
any cat quite as well as this silly, half-wild one. You don’t mind black
cats, do you?”
“No, dear; I like cats.”
“Then I know you’ll be good to him.”
“Is that all?” asked Elsie, with amused interest.
“No, I’ve the funniest yellow dog that comes here at night to pick up the
scraps and things. He isn’t my dog—just a little personal friend of
mine—but I like him very much, and always give him something. He’s
very cute. I think he’s a nigger dog.”
“A nigger dog? What’s that?”
“He belongs to some coloured people, who don’t give turn enough to
eat. I love him because he’s so faithful to his own folks. He comes to see
me at night and pretends to love me, but as soon as I feed him he trots
back home. When he first came, I laughed till I cried at his antics over a
carpet—we had a carpet then. He never saw one before, and barked at
the colours and the figures in the pattern. Then he’d lie down and rub
his back on it and growl. You won’t let anybody hurt him?”
“No. Are there any others?”
“Yes, I ’most forgot. If Sam Ross comes—Sam’s an idiot who lives at the
poorhouse—if he comes, he’ll expect a dinner—my, my, I’m afraid he’ll
cry when he finds we’re not here! But you can send him to the hotel to
me. Don’t let Aunt Cindy speak rough to him. Aunt Cindy’s awfully
good to me, but she can’t bear Sam. She thinks he brings bad luck.”
“How on earth did you meet him?”
“His father was rich. He was a good friend of my Papa’s. We came near
losing our farm once, because a bank failed. Mr. Ross sent Papa a signed
check on his own bank, and told him to write the amount he needed on
it, and pay him when he was able. Papa cried over it, and wouldn’t use
it, and wrote a poem on the back of the check—one of the sweetest of all,
I think. In the war Mr. Ross lost his two younger sons, both killed at
Gettysburg. His wife died heartbroken, and he only lived a year
afterward. He sold his farm for Confederate money and everything was
lost. Sam was sent to the poorhouse. He found out somehow that we
loved him and comes to see us. He’s as harmless as a kitten, and works
in the garden beautifully.”
“I’ll remember,” Elsie promised.
“And one thing more,” she said hesitatingly. “Mamma asked me to
speak to you of this—that’s why she slipped away. There one little room
we have locked. It was Papa’s study just as he left it, with his papers
scattered on the desk, the books and pictures that he loved—you won’t
mind?”
Elsie slipped her arm about Marion, looked into the blue eyes, dim with
tears, drew her close and said:
“It shall be sacred, my child. You must come every day if possible, and
help me.”
“I will. I’ve so many beautiful places to show you in the woods—places
he loved, and taught us to see and love. They won’t let me go in the
woods any more alone. But you have a big brother. That must be very
sweet.”
Mrs. Lenoir hurried to Elsie.
“Come, Marion, we must be going now.”
“I am very sorry to see you leave the home you love so dearly, Mrs.
Lenoir,” said the Northern girl, taking her extended hand. “I hope you
can soon find a way to have it back.”
“Thank you,” replied the mother cheerily. “The longer you stay, the
better for us. You don’t know how happy I am over your coming. It has
lifted a load from our hearts. In the liberal rent you pay us you are our
benefactors. We are very grateful and happy.”
Elsie watched them walk across the lawn to the street, the daughter
leaning on the mother’s arm. She followed slowly and stopped behind
one of the arbor-vitæ bushes beside the gate. The full moon had risen as
the twilight fell and flooded the scene with soft white light. A
whippoorwill struck his first plaintive note, his weird song seeming to
come from all directions and yet to be under her feet. She heard the
rustle of dresses returning along the walk, and Marion and her mother
stood at the gate. They looked long and tenderly at the house. Mrs.
Lenoir uttered a broken sob, Marion slipped an arm around her,
brushed the short curling hair back from her forehead, and softly said:
“Mamma, dear, you know it’s best. I don’t mind. Everybody in town
loves us. Every boy and girl in Piedmont worships you. We will be just
as happy at the hotel.”
In the pauses between the strange bird’s cry, Elsie caught the sound of
another sob, and then a soothing murmur as of a mother bending over a
cradle, and they were gone.
 CHAPTER II
THE EYES OF THE JUNGLE
Elsie stood dreaming for a moment in the shadow of the arbor-vitæ,
breathing the sensuous perfumed air and listening to the distant music
of the falls, her heart quivering in pity for the anguish of which she had
been a witness. Again the spectral cry of the whippoorwill rang near-by,
and she noted for the first time the curious cluck with which the bird
punctuated each call. A sense of dim foreboding oppressed her.
She wondered if the chatter of Marion about the girl in Nashville were
only a child’s guess or more. She laughed softly at the absurdity of the
idea. Never since she had first looked into Ben Cameron’s face did she
feel surer of the honesty and earnestness of his love than to-day in this
quiet home of his native village. It must be the queer call of the bird
which appealed to superstitions she did not know were hidden within
her being.
Still dreaming under its spell, she was startled at the tread of two men
approaching the gate.
The taller, more powerful-looking man put his hand on the latch and
paused.
“Allow no white man to order you around. Remember you are a
freeman and as good as any pale-face who walks this earth.”
She recognized the voice of Silas Lynch.
“Ben Cameron dare me to come about de house,” said the other voice.
“What did he say?”
“He say, wid his eyes batten’ des like lightnen’, ‘Ef I ketch you hangin’
’roun’ dis place agin’, Gus, I’ll jump on you en stomp de life outen ye.’”
“Well, you tell him that your name is Augustus, not ‘Gus,’ and that the
United States troops quartered in this town will be with him soon after
the stomping begins. You wear its uniform. Give the white trash in this
town to understand that they are not even citizens of the nation. As a
sovereign voter, you, once their slave, are not only their equal—you are
their master.”
“Dat I will!” was the firm answer.
The negro to whom Lynch spoke disappeared in the direction taken by
Marion and her mother, and the figure of the handsome mulatto passed
rapidly up the walk, ascended the steps and knocked at the door.
Elsie followed him.
“My father is too much fatigued with his journey to be seen now; you
must call to-morrow,” she said.
The negro lifted his hat and bowed:
“Ah, we are delighted to welcome you, Miss Stoneman, to our land!
Your father asked me to call immediately on his arrival. I have but
obeyed his orders.”
Elsie shrank from the familiarity of his manner and the tones of
authority and patronage with which he spoke.
“He cannot be seen at this hour,” she answered shortly.
“Perhaps you will present my card, then—say that I am at his service,
and let him appoint the time at which I shall return?”
She did not invite him in, but with easy assurance he took his seat on the
joggle-board beside the door and awaited her return.
Against her urgent protest, Stoneman ordered Lynch to be shown at
once to his bedroom.
When the door was closed, the old Commoner, without turning to greet
his visitor or moving his position in bed, asked:
“Are you following my instructions?”
“To the letter, sir.”
“You are initiating the negroes into the League and teaching them the
new catechism?”
“With remarkable success. Its secrecy and ritual appeal to them. Within
six months we shall have the whole race under our control almost to a
man.”
“Almost to a man?”
“We find some so attached to their former masters that reason is
impossible with them. Even threats and the promise of forty acres of
land have no influence.”
The old man snorted with contempt.
“If anything could reconcile me to the Satanic Institution it is the
character of the wretches who submit to it and kiss the hand that strikes.
After all, a slave deserves to be a slave. The man who is mean enough to
wear chains ought to wear them. You must teach,teach, TEACH these
black hounds to know they are men, not brutes!”
The old man paused a moment, and his restless hands fumbled the
cover.
“Your first task, as I told you in the beginning, is to teach every negro to
stand erect in the presence of his former master and assert his manhood.
Unless he does this, the South will bristle with bayonets in vain. The
man who believes he is a dog, is one. The man who believes himself a
king, may become one. Stop this snivelling and sneaking round the back
doors. I can do nothing, God Almighty can do nothing, for a coward. Fix
this as the first law of your own life. Lift up your head! The world is
yours. Take it. Beat this into the skulls of your people, if you do it with
an axe. Teach them the military drill at once. I’ll see that Washington
sends the guns. The state, when under your control, can furnish the
powder.”
“It will surprise you to know the thoroughness with which this has been
done already by the League,” said Lynch. “The white master believed he
could vote the negro as he worked him in the fields during the war. The
League, with its blue flaming altar, under the shadows of night, has
wrought a miracle. The negro is the enemy of his former master and will
be for all time.”
“For the present,” said the old man meditatively, “not a word to a living
soul as to my connection with this work. When the time is ripe, I’ll show
my hand.”
Elsie entered, protesting against her father’s talking longer, and showed
Lynch to the door.
He paused on the moonlit porch and tried to engage her in familiar talk.
She cut him short, and he left reluctantly.
As he bowed his thick neck in pompous courtesy, she caught with a
shiver the odour of pomade on his black half-kinked hair. He stopped
on the lower step, looked back with smiling insolence, and gazed
intently at her beauty. The girl shrank from the gleam of the jungle in his
eyes and hurried within.
She found her father sunk in a stupor. Her cry brought the young
surgeon hurrying into the room, and at the end of an hour he said to
Elsie and Phil:
“He has had a stroke of paralysis. He may lie in mental darkness for
months and then recover. His heart action is perfect. Patience, care, and
love will save him. There is no cause for immediate alarm.”
 CHAPTER III
AUGUSTUS CÆSAR
Phil early found the home of the Camerons the most charming spot in
town. As he sat in the old-fashioned parlour beside Margaret, his brain
seethed with plans for building a hotel on a large scale on the other side
of the Square and restoring her home intact.
The Cameron homestead was a large brick building with an ample
porch looking out directly on the Court House Square, standing in the
middle of a lawn full of trees, flowers, shrubbery, and a wilderness of
evergreen boxwood planted fifty years before. It was located on the farm
from which it had always derived its support. The farm extended up
into the village itself, with the great barn easily seen from the street.
Phil was charmed with the doctor’s genial personality. He often found
the father a decidedly easier person to get along with than his handsome
daughter. The Rev. Hugh McAlpin was a daily caller, and Margaret had
a tantalizing way of showing her deference to his opinions.
Phil hated this preacher from the moment he laid eyes on him. His
pugnacious piety he might have endured but for the fact that he was
good-looking and eloquent. When he rose in the pulpit in all his sacred
dignity, fixed his eyes on Margaret, and began in tenderly modulated
voice to tell about the love of God, Phil clinched his fist. He didn’t care
to join the Presbyterian church, but he quietly made up his mind that, if
it came to the worst and she asked him, he would join anything. What
made him furious was the air of assurance with which the young divine
carried himself about Margaret, as if he had but to say the word and it
would be fixed as by a decree issued from before the foundations of the
world.
He was pleased and surprised to find that his being a Yankee made no
difference in his standing or welcome. The people seemed unconscious
of the part his father played at Washington. Stoneman’s Confiscation Bill
had not yet been discussed in Congress, and the promise of land to the
negroes was universally regarded as a hoax of the League to win their
followers. The old Commoner was not an orator. Hence his name was
scarcely known in the South. The Southern people could not conceive of
a great leader except one who expressed his power through the
megaphone of oratory. They held Charles Sumner chiefly responsible for
Reconstruction.
The fact that Phil was a Yankee who had no axe to grind in the South
caused the people to appeal to him in a pathetic way that touched his
heart. He had not been in town two weeks before he was on good terms
with every youngster, had the entrée to every home, and Ben had taken
him, protesting vehemently, to see every pretty girl there. He found that,
in spite of war and poverty, troubles present and troubles to come, the
young Southern woman was the divinity that claimed and received the
chief worship of man.
The tremendous earnestness with which these youngsters pursued the
work of courting, all of them so poor they scarcely had enough to eat,
amazed and alarmed him beyond measure. He found in several cases as
many as four making a dead set for one girl, as if heaven and earth
depended on the outcome, while the girl seemed to receive it all as a
matter of course—her just tribute.
Every instinct of his quiet reserved nature revolted at any such attempt
to rush his cause with Margaret, and yet it made the cold chills run
down his spine to see that Presbyterian preacher drive his buggy up to
the hotel, take her to ride, and stay three hours. He knew where they
had gone—to Lover’s Leap and along the beautiful road which led to the
North Carolina line. He knew the way—Margaret had showed him. This
road was the Way of Romance. Every farmhouse, cabin, and shady nook
along its beaten track could tell its tale of lovers fleeing from the North
to find happiness in the haven of matrimony across the line in South
Carolina. Everything seemed to favour marriage in this climate. The
state required no license. A legal marriage could be celebrated,
anywhere, at any time, by a minister in the presence of two witnesses,
with or without the consent of parent or guardian. Marriage was the
easiest thing in the state—divorce the one thing impossible. Death alone
could grant divorce.
He was now past all reason in love. He followed the movement of
Margaret’s queenly figure with pathetic abandonment. Beneath her
beautiful manners he swore with a shiver that she was laughing at him.
Now and then he caught a funny expression about her eyes, as if she
were consumed with a sly sense of humour in her love affairs.
What he felt to be his manliest traits, his reserve, dignity, and moral
earnestness, she must think cold and slow beside the dash, fire, and
assurance of these Southerners. He could tell by the way she encouraged
the preacher before his eyes that she was criticizing and daring him to
let go for once. Instead of doing it, he sank back appalled at the prospect
and let the preacher carry her off again.
He sought solace in Dr. Cameron, who was utterly oblivious of his
daughter’s love affairs.
Phil was constantly amazed at the variety of his knowledge, the
genuineness of his culture, his modesty, and the note of youth and cheer
with which he still pursued the study of medicine.
His company was refreshing for its own sake. The slender graceful
figure, ruddy face, with piercing, dark-brown eyes in startling contrast
to his snow-white hair and beard, had for Phil a perpetual charm. He
never tired listening to his talk, and noting the peculiar grace and
dignity with which he carried himself, unconscious of the commanding
look of his brilliant eyes.
“I hear that you have used hypnotism in your practice, Doctor,” Phil
said to him one day, as he watched with fascination the changing play of
his mobile features.
“Oh, yes! used it for years. Southern doctors have always been pioneers
in the science of medicine. Dr. Crawford Long, of Georgia, you know,
was the first practitioner in America to apply anesthesia to surgery.”
“But where did you run up against hypnotism? I thought this a new
thing under the sun?”
The doctor laughed.
“It’s not a home industry, exactly. I became interested in it in Edinburgh
while a medical student, and pursued it with increased interest in Paris.”
“Did you study medicine abroad?” Phil asked in surprise.
“Yes; I was poor, but I managed to raise and to borrow enough to take
three years on the other side. I put all I had and all my credit in it. I’ve
never regretted the sacrifice. The more I saw of the great world, the
better I liked my own world. I’ve given these farmers and their families
the best God gave to me.”
“Do you find much use for your powers of hypnosis?” Phil asked.
“Only in an experimental way. Naturally I am endowed with this gift—
especially over certain classes who are easily the subjects of extreme
fear. I owned a rascally slave named Gus whom I used to watch stealing.
Suddenly confronting him, I’ve thrown him into unconsciousness with a
steady gaze of the eye, until he would drop on his face, trembling like a
leaf, unable to speak until I allowed him.”
“How do you account for such powers?”
“I don’t account for them at all. They belong to the world of spiritual
phenomena of which we know so little and yet which touch our material
lives at a thousand points every day. How do we account for sleep and
dreams, or second sight, or the day dreams which we call visions?”
Phil was silent, and the doctor went on dreamily:
“The day my boy Richard was killed at Gettysburg, I saw him lying
dead in a field near a house. I saw some soldiers bury him in the corner
of that field, and then an old man go to the grave, dig up his body, cart it
away into the woods, and throw it into a ditch. I saw it before I heard of
the battle or knew that he was in it. He was reported killed, and his body
has never been found. It is the one unspeakable horror of the war to me.
I’ll never get over it.”
“How very strange!” exclaimed Phil.
“And yet the war was nothing, my boy, to the horrors I feel clutching the
throat of the South to-day. I’m glad you and your father are down here.
Your disinterested view of things may help us at Washington when we
need it most. The South seems to have no friend at court.”
“Your younger men, I find, are hopeful, Doctor,” said Phil.
“Yes, the young never see danger until it’s time to die. I’m not a
pessimist, but I was happier in jail. Scores of my old friends have given
up in despair and died. Delicate and cultured women are living on
cowpeas, corn bread, and molasses—and of such quality they would not
have fed it to a slave. Children go to bed hungry. Droves of brutal
negroes roam at large, stealing, murdering, and threatening blacker
crimes. We are under the heel of petty military tyrants, few of whom
ever smelled gunpowder in a battle. At the approaching election, not a
decent white man in this country can take the infamous test oath. I am
disfranchised because I gave a cup of water to the lips of one of my
dying boys on the battlefield. My slaves are all voters. There will be a
negro majority of more than one hundred thousand in this state.
Desperadoes are here teaching these negroes insolence and crime in
their secret societies. The future is a nightmare.”
“You have my sympathy, sir,” said Phil warmly, extending his hand.
“These Reconstruction Acts, conceived in sin and brought forth in
iniquity, can bring only shame and disgrace until the last trace of them is
wiped from our laws. I hope it will not be necessary to do it in blood.”
The doctor was deeply touched. He could not be mistaken in the
genuineness of any man’s feeling. He never dreamed this earnest
straightforward Yankee youngster was in love with Margaret, and it
would have made no difference in the accuracy of his judgment.
“Your sentiments do you honour, sir,” he said with grave courtesy.
“And you honour us and our town with your presence and friendship.”
As Phil hurried home in a warm glow of sympathy for the people whose
hospitality had made him their friend and champion, he encountered a
negro trooper standing on the corner, watching the Cameron house with
furtive glance.
Instinctively he stopped, surveyed the man from head to foot and asked:
“What’s the trouble?”
“None er yo’ business,” the negro answered, slouching across to the
opposite side of the street.
Phil watched him with disgust. He had the short, heavy-set neck of the
lower order of animals. His skin was coal black, his lips so thick they
curled both ways up and down with crooked blood marks across them.
His nose was flat, and its enormous nostrils seemed in perpetual
dilation. The sinister bead eyes, with brown splotches in their whites,
were set wide apart and gleamed apelike under his scant brows. His
enormous cheekbones and jaws seemed to protrude beyond the ears and
almost hide them.
“That we should send such soldiers here to flaunt our uniform in the
faces of these people!” he exclaimed, with bitterness.
He met Ben hurrying home from a visit to Elsie. The two young soldiers
whose prejudices had melted in the white heat of battle had become fast
friends.
Phil laughed and winked:
“I’ll meet you to-night around the family altar!”
When he reached home, Ben saw, slouching in front of the house,
walking back and forth and glancing furtively behind him, the negro
trooper whom his friend had passed.
He walked quickly in front of him, and blinking his eyes rapidly, said:
“Didn’t I tell you, Gus, not to let me catch you hanging around this
house again?”
The negro drew himself up, pulling his blue uniform into position as his
body stretched out of its habitual slouch, and answered:
“My name ain’t ‘Gus.’”
Ben gave a quick little chuckle and leaned back against the palings, his
hand resting on one that was loose. He glanced at the negro carelessly
and said:
“Well, Augustus Cæsar, I give your majesty thirty seconds to move off
the block.”
Gus’ first impulse was to run, but remembering himself he threw back
his shoulders and said:
“I reckon de streets free——”
“Yes, and so is kindling wood!”
Quick as a flash of lightning the paling suddenly left the fence and broke
three times in such bewildering rapidity on the negro’s head he forgot
everything he ever knew or thought he knew save one thing—the way
to run. He didn’t fly, but he made remarkable use of the facilities with
which he had been endowed.
Ben watched him disappear toward the camp.
He picked up the pieces of paling, pulled a strand of black wool from a
splinter, looked at it curiously and said:
“A sprig of his majesty’s hair—I’ll doubtless remember him without it!”
 CHAPTER IV
AT THE POINT OF THE BAYONET
Within an hour from Ben’s encounter he was arrested without warrant
by the military commandant, handcuffed, and placed on the train for
Columbia, more than a hundred miles distant. The first purpose of
sending him in charge of a negro guard was abandoned for fear of a riot.
A squad of white troops accompanied him.
Elsie was waiting at the gate, watching for his coming, her heart aglow
with happiness.
When Marion and little Hugh ran to tell the exciting news, she thought it
a joke and refused to believe it.
“Come, dear, don’t tease me; you know it’s not true!”
“I wish I may die if ’tain’t so!” Hugh solemnly declared. “He run Gus
away ’cause he scared Aunt Margaret so. They come and put handcuffs
on him and took him to Columbia. I tell you Grandpa and Grandma and
Aunt Margaret are mad!”
Elsie called Phil and begged him to see what had happened.
When Phil reported Ben’s arrest without a warrant, and the indignity to
which he had been subjected on the amazing charge of resisting military
authority, Elsie hurried with Marion and Hugh to the hotel to express
her indignation, and sent Phil to Columbia on the next train to fight for
his release.
By the use of a bribe Phil discovered that a special inquisition had been
hastily organized to procure perjured testimony against Ben on the
charge of complicity in the murder of a carpet-bag adventurer named
Ashburn, who had been killed at Columbia in a row in a disreputable
resort. This murder had occurred the week Ben Cameron was in
Nashville. The enormous reward of $25,000 had been offered for the
conviction of any man who could be implicated in the killing. Scores of
venal wretches, eager for this blood money, were using every device of
military tyranny to secure evidence on which to convict—no matter who
the man might be. Within six hours of his arrival they had pounced on
Ben.
They arrested as a witness an old negro named John Stapler, noted for
his loyalty to the Camerons. The doctor had saved his life once in a
dangerous illness. They were going to put him to torture and force him
to swear that Ben Cameron had tried to bribe him to kill Ashburn.
General Howle, the Commandant of the Columbia district, was in
Charleston on a visit to headquarters.
Phil resorted to the ruse of pretending, as a Yankee, the deepest
sympathy for Ashburn, and by the payment of a fee of twenty dollars to
the Captain, was admitted to the fort to witness the torture.
They led the old man trembling into the presence of the Captain, who
sat on an improvised throne in full uniform.
“Have you ordered a barber to shave this man’s head?” sternly asked
the judge.
“Please, Marster, fer de Lawd’s sake, I ain’ done nuttin‘—doan’ shave
my head. Dat ha’r been wropped lak dat fur ten year! I die sho’ ef I lose
my ha’r.”
“Bring the barber, and take him back until he comes,” was the order. In
an hour they led him again into the room blindfolded, and placed him in
a chair.
“Have you let him see a preacher before putting him through?” the
Captain asked. “I have an order from the General in Charleston to put
him through to-day.”
“For Gawd’s sake, Marster, doan’ put me froo—I ain’t done nuttin’ en I
doan’ know nuttin’!”
The old negro slipped to his knees, trembling from head to foot.
The guards caught him by the shoulders and threw him back into the
chair. The bandage was removed, and just in front of him stood a brass
cannon pointed at his head, a soldier beside it holding the string ready
to pull. John threw himself backward, yelling:
“Goddermighty!”
When he scrambled to his feet and started to run, another cannon swung
on him from the rear. He dropped to his knees and began to pray.
“Yas, Lawd, I’se er comin’. I hain’t ready—but, Lawd, I got ter come!
Save me!”
“Shave him!” the Captain ordered.
While the old man sat moaning, they lathered his head with two
scrubbing-brushes and shaved it clean.
“Now stand him up by the wall and measure him for his coffin,” was the
order.
They snatched him from the chair, pushed him against the wall, and
measured him. While they were taking his measure, the man next to him
whispered:
“Now’s the time to save your hide—tell all about Ben Cameron trying to
hire you to kill Ashburn.”
“Give him a few minutes,” said the Captain, “and maybe we can hear
what Mr. Cameron said about Ashburn.”
“I doan’ know nuttin’, General,” pleaded the old darkey. “I ain’t heard
nuttin’—I ain’t seed Marse Ben fer two monts.”
“You needn’t lie to us. The rebels have been posting you. But it’s no use.
We’ll get it out of you.”
“‘Fo’ Gawd, Marster, I’se telling de truf!”
“Put him in the dark cell and keep him there the balance of his life
unless he tells,” was the order.
At the end of four days, Phil was summoned again to witness the show.
John was carried to another part of the fort and shown the sweat-box.
“Now tell all you know or in you go!” said his tormentor.
The negro looked at the engine of torture in abject terror—a closet in the
walls of the fort just big enough to admit the body, with an adjustable
top to press down too low for the head to be held erect. The door closed
tight against the breast of the victim. The only air admitted was through
an auger-hole in the door.
The old man’s lips moved in prayer.
“Will you tell?” growled the Captain.
“I cain’t tell ye nuttin’ ‘cept’n’ a lie!” he moaned.
They thrust him in, slammed the door, and in a loud voice the Captain
said:
“Keep him there for thirty days unless he tells.”
He was left in the agony of the sweat-box for thirty-three hours and
taken out. His limbs were swollen and when he attempted to walk he
tottered and fell.
The guard jerked him to his feet, and the Captain said:
“I’m afraid we’ve taken him out too soon, but if he don’t tell he can go
back and finish the month out.”
The poor old negro dropped in a faint, and they carried him back to his
cell.
Phil determined to spare no means, fair or foul, to secure Ben’s release
from the clutches of these devils. He had as yet been unable to locate his
place of confinement.
He continued his ruse of friendly curiosity, kept in touch with the
Captain, and the Captain in touch with his pocketbook.
Summoned to witness another interesting ceremony, he hurried to the
fort.
The officer winked at him confidentially, and took him out to a row of
dungeons built of logs and ceiled inside with heavy boards. A single
pane of glass about eight inches square admitted light ten feet from the
ground.
There was a commotion inside, curses, groans, and cries for mercy
mingling in rapid succession.
“What is it?” asked Phil.
“Hell’s goin’ on in there!” laughed the officer.
“Evidently.”
A heavy crash, as though a ton weight had struck the floor, and then all
was still.
“By George, it’s too bad we can’t see it all!” exclaimed the officer.
“What does it mean?” urged Phil.
Again the Captain laughed immoderately.
“I’ve got a blue-blood in there taking the bluin’ out of his system. He
gave me some impudence. I’m teaching him who’s running this
country!”
“What are you doing to him?” Phil asked with a sudden suspicion.
“Oh, just having a little fun! I put two big white drunks in there with
him—half-fighting drunks, you know—and told them to work on his
teeth and manicure his face a little to initiate him into the ranks of the
common people, so to speak!”
Again he laughed.
Phil, listening at the keyhole, held up his hand:
“Hush, they’re talking——”
He could hear Ben Cameron’s voice in the softest drawl:
“Say it again.”
“Please, Marster!”
“Now both together, and a little louder!”
“Please, Marster,” came the united chorus.
“Now what kind of a dog did I say you are?”
“The kind as comes when his marster calls.”
“Both together—the under dog seems to have too much cover, like his
mouth might be full of cotton.”
They repeated it louder.
“A common—stump-tailed—cur-dog?”
“Yessir.”
“Say it.”
“A common—stump-tailed—cur-dog—Marster!”
“A pair of them.”
“A pair of ’em.”
“No, the whole thing—all together—‘we—are—a—pair!’”
“Yes—Marster.” They repeated it in chorus.
“With apologies to the dogs——”
“Apologies to the dogs——”
“And why does your master honour the kennel with his presence to-
day?”
“He hit a nigger on the head so hard that he strained the nigger’s ankle,
and he’s restin’ from his labours.”
“That’s right, Towser. If I had you and Tige a few hours every day I
could make good squirrel-dogs out of you.”
There was a pause. Phil looked up and smiled.
“What does it sound like?” asked the Captain, with a shade of doubt in
his voice.
“Sounds to me like a Sunday-school teacher taking his class through a
new catechism.”
The Captain fumbled hurriedly for his keys.
“There’s something wrong in there.”
He opened the door and sprang in.
Ben Cameron was sitting on top of the two toughs, knocking their heads
together as they repeated each chorus.
“Walk in, gentlemen. The show is going on now—the animals are doing
beautifully,” said Ben.
The Captain muttered an oath. Phil suddenly grasped him by the throat,
hurled him against the wall, and snatched the keys from his hand.
“Now open your mouth, you white-livered cur, and inside of twenty-
four hours I’ll have you behind the bars. I have all the evidence I need.
I’m an ex-officer of the United States Army, of the fighting corps—not
the vulture division. This is my friend. Accompany us to the street and
strike your charges from the record.”
The coward did as he was ordered, and Ben hurried back to Piedmont
with a friend toward whom he began to feel closer than a brother.
When Elsie heard the full story of the outrage, she bore herself toward
Ben with unusual tenderness, and yet he knew that the event had driven
their lives farther apart. He felt instinctively the cold silent eye of her
father, and his pride stiffened under it. The girl had never considered
the possibility of a marriage without her father’s blessing. Ben Cameron
was too proud to ask it. He began to fear that the differences between
her father and his people reached to the deepest sources of life.
Phil found himself a hero at the Cameron House. Margaret said little,
but her bearing spoke in deeper language than words. He felt it would
be mean to take advantage of her gratitude.
But he was quick to respond to the motherly tenderness of Mrs.
Cameron. In the groups of neighbours who gathered in the evenings to
discuss with the doctor the hopes, fears, and sorrows of the people, Phil
was a charmed listener to the most brilliant conversations he had ever
heard. It seemed the normal expression of their lives. He had never
before seen people come together to talk to one another after this
fashion. More and more the simplicity, dignity, patience, courtesy, and
sympathy of these people in their bearing toward one another impressed
him. More and more he grew to like them.
Marion went out of her way to express her open admiration for Phil and
tease him about Margaret. The Rev. Hugh McAlpin was monopolizing
her on the Wednesday following his return from Columbia and Phil
sought Marion for sympathy.
“What will you give me if I tease you about Margaret right before her?”
she asked.
He blushed furiously.
“Don’t you dare such a thing on peril of your life!”
“You know you like to be teased about her,” she cried, her blue eyes
dancing with fun.
“With such a pretty little friend to do the teasing all by ourselves,
perhaps——”
“You’ll never get her unless you have more spunk.”
“Then I’ll find consolation with you.”
“No, I mean to marry young.”
“And your ideal of life?”
“To fill the world with flowers, laughter, and music—especially my own
home—and never do a thing I can make my husband do for me! How do
you like it?”
“I think it very sweet,” Phil answered soberly.
At noon on the following Friday, the Piedmont Eagle appeared with an
editorial signed by Dr. Cameron, denouncing in the fine language of the
old school the arrest of Ben as “despotism and the usurpation of
authority.”
At three o’clock, Captain Gilbert, in command of the troops stationed in
the village, marched a squad of soldiers to the newspaper office. One of
them carried a sledge-hammer. In ten minutes he demolished the office,
heaped the type and their splintered cases on top of the battered press in
the middle of the street, and set fire to the pile.
On the courthouse door he nailed this proclamation:
To the People of Ulster County:
The censures of the press, directed against the servants of the people,
may be endured; but the military force in command of this district are
not the servants of the people of South Carolina. WE ARE YOUR
MASTERS. The impertinence of newspaper comment on the military
will not be brooked UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHATEVER.
G. C. GILBERT,
Captain in Command.
Not content with this display of power, he determined to make an
example of Dr. Cameron, as the leader of public opinion in the county.
He ordered a squad of his negro troops to arrest him immediately and
take him to Columbia for obstructing the execution of the
Reconstruction Acts. He placed the squad under command of Gus,
whom he promoted to be a corporal, with instructions to wait until the
doctor was inside his house, boldly enter it and arrest him.
When Gus marched his black janizaries into the house, no one was in the
office. Margaret had gone for a ride with Phil, and Ben had strolled with
Elsie to Lover’s Leap, unconscious of the excitement in town.
Dr. Cameron himself had heard nothing of it, having just reached home
from a visit to a country patient.
Gus stationed his men at each door, and with another trooper walked
straight into Mrs. Cameron’s bedroom, where the doctor was resting on
a lounge.
Had an imp of perdition suddenly sprung through the floor, the master
of the house of Cameron would not have been more enraged or
surprised.
A sudden leap, as the spring of a panther, and he stood before his
former slave, his slender frame erect, his face a livid spot in its snow-
white hair, his brilliant eyes flashing with fury.
Gus suddenly lost control of his knees.
His old master transfixed him with his eyes, and in a voice, whose tones
gripped him by the throat, said:
“How dare you?”
The gun fell from the negro’s hand, and he dropped to the floor on his
face.
His companion uttered a yell and sprang through the door, rallying the
men as he went:
“Fall back! Fall back! He’s killed Gus! Shot him dead wid his eye. He’s
conjured him! Git de whole army quick.”
They fled to the Commandant.
Gilbert ordered the negroes to their tents and led his whole company of
white regulars to the hotel, arrested Dr. Cameron, and rescued his
fainting trooper, who had been revived and placed under a tree on the
lawn.
The little Captain had a wicked look on his face. He refused to allow the
doctor a moment’s delay to leave instructions for his wife, who had gone
to visit a neighbour. He was placed in the guard-house, and a detail of
twenty soldiers stationed around it.
The arrest was made so quickly, not a dozen people in town had heard
of it. As fast as it was known, people poured into the house, one by one,
to express their sympathy. But a greater surprise awaited them.
Within thirty minutes after he had been placed in prison, a Lieutenant
entered, accompanied by a soldier and a negro blacksmith who carried
in his hand two big chains with shackles on each end.
The doctor gazed at the intruders a moment with incredulity, and then,
as the enormity of the outrage dawned on him, he flushed and drew
himself erect, his face livid and rigid.
He clutched his throat with his slender fingers, slowly recovered
himself, glanced at the shackles in the black hands and then at the young
Lieutenant’s face, and said slowly, with heaving breast:
“My God! Have you been sent to place these irons on me?”
“Such are my orders, sir,” replied the officer, motioning to the negro
smith to approach. He stepped forward, unlocked the padlock, and
prepared the fetters to be placed on his arms and legs. These fetters were
of enormous weight, made of iron rods three quarters of an inch thick
and connected together by chains of like weight.
“This is monstrous!” groaned the doctor, with choking agony, glancing
helplessly about the bare cell for some weapon with which to defend
himself.
Suddenly looking the Lieutenant in the face, he said:
“I demand, sir, to see your commanding officer. He cannot pretend that
these shackles are needed to hold a weak unarmed man in prison,
guarded by two hundred soldiers?”
“It is useless. I have his orders direct.”
“But I must see him. No such outrage has ever been recorded in the
history of the American people. I appeal to the Magna Charta rights of
every man who speaks the English tongue—no man shall be arrested or
imprisoned or deprived of his own household, or of his liberties, unless
by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land!”
“The bayonet is your only law. My orders admit of no delay. For your
own sake, I advise you to submit. As a soldier, Dr. Cameron, you know I
must execute orders.”
“These are not the orders of a soldier!” shouted the prisoner, enraged
beyond all control. “They are orders for a jailer, a hangman, a scullion—
no soldier who wears the sword of a civilized nation can take such
orders. The war is over; the South is conquered; I have no country save
America. For the honour of the flag, for which I once poured out my
blood on the heights of Buena Vista, I protest against this shame!”
The Lieutenant fell back a moment before the burst of his anger.
“Kill me! Kill me!” he went on passionately, throwing his arms wide
open and exposing his breast. “Kill—I am in your power. I have no
desire to live under such conditions. Kill, but you must not inflict on me
and on my people this insult worse than death!”
“Do your duty, blacksmith,” said the officer, turning his back and
walking toward the door.
The negro advanced with the chains cautiously, and attempted to snap
one of the shackles on the doctor’s right arm.
With sudden maniac frenzy, Dr. Cameron seized the negro by the throat,
hurled him to the floor, and backed against the wall.
The Lieutenant approached and remonstrated:
“Why compel me to add the indignity of personal violence? You must
submit.”
“I am your prisoner,” fiercely retorted the doctor. “I have been a soldier
in the armies of America, and I know how to die. Kill me, and my last
breath will be a blessing. But while I have life to resist, for myself and for
my people, this thing shall not be done!”
The Lieutenant called a sergeant and a file of soldiers, and the sergeant
stepped forward to seize the prisoner.
Dr. Cameron sprang on him with the ferocity of a tiger, seized his
musket, and attempted to wrench it from his grasp.
The men closed in on him. A short passionate fight and the slender,
proud, gray-haired man lay panting on the floor.
Four powerful assailants held his hands and feet, and the negro smith,
with a grin, secured the rivet on the right ankle and turned the key in
the padlock on the left.
As he drove the rivet into the shackle on his left arm, a spurt of bruised
blood from the old Mexican War wound stained the iron.
Dr. Cameron lay for a moment in a stupor. At length he slowly rose. The
clank of the heavy chains seemed to choke him with horror. He sank on
the floor, covering his face with his hands and groaned:
“The shame! The shame! O God, that I might have died! My poor, poor
wife!”
Captain Gilbert entered and said with a sneer:
“I will take you now to see your wife and friends if you would like to
call before setting out for Columbia.”
The doctor paid no attention to him.
“Will you follow me while I lead you through this town, to show them
their chief has fallen, or will you force me to drag you?”
Receiving no answer, he roughly drew the doctor to his feet, held him by
the arm, and led him thus in half-unconscious stupor through the
principal street, followed by a drove of negroes. He ordered a squad of
troops to meet him at the depot. Not a white man appeared on the
streets. When one saw the sight and heard the clank of those chains,
there was a sudden tightening of the lip, a clinched fist, and an averted
face.
When they approached the hotel, Mrs. Cameron ran to meet him, her
face white as death.
In silence she kissed his lips, kissed each shackle on his wrists, took her
handkerchief and wiped the bruised blood from the old wound on his
arm the iron had opened afresh, and then with a look, beneath which the
Captain shrank, she said in low tones:
“Do your work quickly. You have but a few moments to get out of this
town with your prisoner. I have sent a friend to hold my son. If he
comes before you go, he will kill you on sight as he would a mad dog.”
With a sneer, the Captain passed the hotel and led the doctor, still in
half-unconscious stupor, toward the depot down past his old slave
quarters. He had given his negroes who remained faithful each a cabin
and a lot.
They looked on in awed silence as the Captain proclaimed:
“Fellow citizens, you are the equal of any white man who walks the
ground. The white man’s day is done. Your turn has come.”
As he passed Jake’s cabin, the doctor’s faithful man stepped suddenly in
front of him, looking at the Captain out of the corners of his eyes, and
asked:
“Is I yo’ equal?”
“Yes.”
“Des lak any white man?”
“Exactly.”
The negro’s fist suddenly shot into Gilbert’s nose with the crack of a
sledge-hammer, laying him stunned on the pavement.
“Den take dat f’um yo’ equal, d—n you!” he cried, bending over his
prostrate figure. “I’ll show you how to treat my ole marster, you low-
down slue-footed devil!”
The stirring little drama roused the doctor and he turned to his servant
with his old-time courtesy, and said:
“Thank you, Jake.”
“Come in here, Marse Richard; I knock dem things off’n you in er
minute, ’en I get you outen dis town in er jiffy.”
“No, Jake, that is not my way; bring this gentleman some water, and
then my horse and buggy. You can take me to the depot. This officer can
follow with his men.” And he did.
 CHAPTER V
FORTY ACRES AND A MULE
When Phil returned with Margaret, he drove at Mrs. Cameron’s request
to find Ben, brought him with all speed to the hotel, took him to his
room, and locked the door before he told him the news. After an hour’s
blind rage, he agreed to obey his father’s positive orders to keep away
from the Captain until his return, and to attempt no violence against the
authorities.
Phil undertook to manage the case in Columbia, and spent three days
collecting his evidence before leaving.
Swifter feet had anticipated him. Two days after the arrival of Dr.
Cameron at the fort in Colombia, a dust-stained, tired negro was
ushered into the presence of General Howle.
He looked about timidly and laughed loudly.
“Well, my man, what’s the trouble? You seem to have walked all the
way, and laugh as if you were glad of it.”
“I ‘spec’ I is, sah,” said Jake, sidling up confidentially.
“Well?” said Howle good-humouredly.
Jake’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“I hears you got my ole marster, Dr. Cameron, in dis place.”
“Yes. What do you know against him?”
“Nuttin’, sah. I des hurry ’long down ter take his place, so’s you can sen’
him back home. He’s erbleeged ter go. Dey’s er pow’ful lot er sick folks
up dar in de country cain’t git ’long widout him, an er pow’ful lot er
well ones gwiner be raisin’ de debbel ’bout dis. You can hol’ me, sah.
Des tell my ole marster when ter be yere, en he sho’ come.”
Jake paused and bowed low.
“Yessah, hit’s des lak I tell you. Fuddermo’, I ’spec’ I’se de man what
done de damages. I ’spec’ I bus’ de Capt’n’s nose so ’tain gwine be no
mo’ good to ’im.”
Howle questioned Jake as to the whole affair, asked him a hundred
questions about the condition of the county, the position of Dr.
Cameron, and the possible effect of this event on the temper of the
people.
The affair had already given him a bad hour. The news of this shackling
of one of the most prominent men in the State had spread like wildfire,
and had caused the first deep growl of anger from the people. He saw
that it was a senseless piece of stupidity. The election was rapidly
approaching. He was master of the State, and the less friction the better.
His mind was made up instantly. He released Dr. Cameron with an
apology, and returned with him and Jake for a personal inspection of the
affairs of Ulster county.
In a thirty-minutes’ interview with Captain Gilbert, Howle gave him
more pain than his broken nose.
“And why did you nail up the doors of that Presbyterian church?” he
asked suavely.
“Because McAlpin, the young cub who preaches there, dared come to
this camp and insult me about the arrest of old Cameron.”
“I suppose you issued an order silencing him from the ministry?”
“I did, and told him I’d shackle him if he opened his mouth again.”
“Good. The throne of Russia needn’t worry about a worthy successor.
Any further ecclesiastical orders?”
“None, except the oaths I’ve prescribed for them before they shall
preach again.”
“Fine! These Scotch Covenanters will feel at home with you.”
“Well, I’ve made them bite the dust—and they know who’s runnin’ this
town, and don’t you forget it.”
“No doubt. Yet we may have too much of even a good thing. The
League is here to run this country. The business of the military is to keep
still and back them when they need it.”
“We’ve the strongest council here to be found in any county in this
section,” said Gilbert with pride.
“Just so. The League meets once a week. We have promised them the
land of their masters and equal social and political rights. Their
members go armed to these meetings and drill on Saturdays in the
public square. The white man is afraid to interfere lest his house or barn
take fire. A negro prisoner in the dock needs only to make the sign to be
acquitted. Not a negro will dare to vote against us. Their women are
formed into societies, sworn to leave their husbands and refuse to marry
any man who dares our anger. The negro churches have pledged
themselves to expel him from their membership. What more do you
want?”
“There’s another side to it,” protested the Captain. “Since the League has
taken in the negroes, every Union white man has dropped it like a hot
iron, except the lone scallawag or carpet-bagger who expects an office.
In the church, the social circle, in business or pleasure, these men are
lepers. How can a human being stand it? I’ve tried to grind this hellish
spirit in the dirt under my heel, and unless you can do it they’ll beat you
in the long run! You’ve got to have some Southern white men or you’re
lost.”
“I’ll risk it with a hundred thousand negro majority,” said Howle with a
sneer. “The fun will just begin then. In the meantime, I’ll have you ease
up on this county’s government. I’ve brought that man back who
knocked you down. Let him alone. I’ve pardoned him. The less said
about this affair, the better.”
As the day of the election under the new régime of Reconstruction drew
near, the negroes were excited by rumours of the coming great events.
Every man was to receive forty acres of land for his vote, and the
enthusiastic speakers and teachers had made the dream a resistless one
by declaring that the Government would throw in a mule with the forty
acres. Some who had hesitated about the forty acres of land,
remembering that it must be worked, couldn’t resist the idea of owning
a mule.
The Freedman’s Bureau reaped a harvest in $2 marriage fees from
negroes who were urged thus to make their children heirs of landed
estates stocked with mules.
Every stranger who appeared in the village was regarded with awe as a
possible surveyor sent from Washington to run the lines of these forty-
acre plots.
And in due time the surveyors appeared. Uncle Aleck, who now
devoted his entire time to organizing the League, and drinking whiskey
which the dues he collected made easy, was walking back to Piedmont
from a League meeting in the country, dreaming of this promised land.
He lifted his eyes from the dusty way and saw before him two surveyors
with their arms full of line stakes painted red, white, and blue. They
were well-dressed Yankees—he could not be mistaken. Not a doubt
disturbed his mind. The kingdom of heaven was at hand!
He bowed low and cried:
“Praise de Lawd! De messengers is come! I’se waited long, but I sees ’em
now wid my own eyes!”
“You can bet your life on that, old pard,” said the spokesman of the pair.
“We go two and two, just as the apostles did in the olden times. We have
only a few left. The boys are hurrying to get their homes. All you’ve got
to do is to drive one of these red, white, and blue stakes down at each
corner of the forty acres of land you want, and every rebel in the infernal
regions can’t pull it up.”
“Hear dat now!”
“Just like I tell you. When this stake goes into the ground, it’s like
planting a thousand cannon at each corner.”
“En will the Lawd’s messengers come wid me right now to de bend er
de creek whar I done pick out my forty acres?”
“We will, if you have the needful for the ceremony. The fee for the
surveyor is small—only two dollars for each stake. We have no time to
linger with foolish virgins who have no oil in their lamps. The
bridegroom has come. They who have no oil must remain in outer
darkness.” The speaker had evidently been a preacher in the North, and
his sacred accent sealed his authority with the old negro, who had been
an exhorter himself.
Aleck felt in his pocket the jingle of twenty gold dollars, the initiation
fees of the week’s harvest of the League. He drew them, counted out
eight, and took his four stakes. The surveyors kindly showed him how
to drive them down firmly to the first stripe of blue. When they had
stepped off a square of about forty acres of the Lenoir farm, including
the richest piece of bottom land on the creek, which Aleck’s children
under his wife’s direction were working for Mrs. Lenoir, and the four
stakes were planted, old Aleck shouted:
“Glory ter God!”
“Now,” said the foremost surveyor, “you want a deed—a deed in fee
simple with the big seal of the Government on it, and you’re fixed for
life. The deed you can take to the courthouse and make the clerk record
it.”
The man drew from his pocket an official-looking paper, with a red
circular seal pasted on its face.
Uncle Aleck’s eyes danced.
“Is dat de deed?”
“It will be if I write your name on it and describe the land.”
“En what’s de fee fer dat?”
“Only twelve dollars; you can take it now or wait until we come again.
There’s no particular hurry about this. The wise man, though, leaves
nothing for to-morrow that he can carry with him to-day.”
“I takes de deed right now, gemmen,” said Aleck, eagerly counting out
the remaining twelve dollars. “Fix ’im up for me.”
The surveyor squatted in the field and carefully wrote the document.
They went on their way rejoicing, and old Aleck hurried into Piedmont
with the consciousness of lordship of the soil. He held himself so
proudly that it seemed to straighten some of the crook out of his bow
legs.
He marched up to the hotel where Margaret sat reading and Marion was
on the steps playing with a setter.
“Why, Uncle Aleck!” Marion exclaimed, “I haven’t seen you in a long
time.”
Aleck drew himself to his full height—at least, as full as his bow legs
would permit, and said gruffly:
“Miss Ma’ian, I axes you to stop callin’ me ‘uncle’; my name is Mr.
Alexander Lenoir——”
“Until Aunt Cindy gets after you,” laughed the girl. “Then it’s much
shorter than that, Uncle Aleck.”
He shuffled his feet and looked out at the square unconcernedly.
“Yaas’m, dat’s what fetch me here now. I comes ter tell yer Ma ter tell
dat ’oman Cindy ter take her chillun off my farm. I gwine ’low no mo’
rent-payin’ ter nobody off’n my lan’!”
“Your land, Uncle Aleck? When did you get it?” asked Marion, placing
her cheek against the setter.
“De Gubment gim it ter me to-day,” he replied, fumbling in his pocket,
and pulling out the document. “You kin read it all dar yo’sef.”
He handed Marion the paper, and Margaret hurried down and read it
over her shoulder.
Both girls broke into screams of laughter.
Aleck looked up sharply.
“Do you know what’s written on this paper, Uncle Aleck?” Margaret
asked.
“Cose I do. Dat’s de deed ter my farm er forty acres in de land er de
creek, whar I done stuck off wid de red, white, an’ blue sticks de
Gubment gimme.”
“I’ll read it to you,” said Margaret.
“Wait a minute,” interrupted Marion. “I want Aunt Cindy to hear it—
she’s here to see Mamma in the kitchen now.”
She ran for Uncle Aleck’s spouse. Aunt Cindy walked around the house
and stood by the steps, eying her erstwhile lord with contempt.
“Got yer deed, is yer, ter stop me payin’ my missy her rent fum de lan’
my chillun wucks? Yu’se er smart boy, you is—let’s hear de deed!”
Aleck edged away a little, and said with a bow:
“Dar’s de paper wid de big mark er de Gubment.”
Aunt Cindy sniffed the air contemptuously.
“What is it, honey?” she asked of Margaret.
Margaret read in mock solemnity the mystic writing on the deed:
To Whom It May Concern:
As Moses lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness for the
enlightenment of the people, even so have I lifted twenty shining plunks
out of this benighted nigger! Selah!
As Uncle Aleck walked away with Aunt Cindy shouting in derision,
“Dar, now! Dar, now!” the bow in his legs seemed to have sprung a
sharper curve.
 CHAPTER VI
A WHISPER IN THE CROWD
The excitement which preceded the first Reconstruction election in the
South paralyzed the industries of the country. When demagogues
poured down from the North and began their raving before crowds of
ignorant negroes, the plow stopped in the furrow, the hoe was dropped,
and the millennium was at hand.
Negro tenants, working under contracts issued by the Freedman’s
Bureau, stopped work, and rode their landlords’ mules and horses
around the county, following these orators.
The loss to the cotton crop alone from the abandonment of the growing
plant was estimated at over $60,000,000.
The one thing that saved the situation from despair was the large grain
and forage crops of the previous season which thrifty farmers had stored
in their barns. So important was the barn and its precious contents that
Dr. Cameron hired Jake to sleep in his.
This immense barn, which was situated at the foot of the hill some two
hundred yards behind the house, had become a favourite haunt of
Marion and Hugh. She had made a pet of the beautiful thoroughbred
mare which had belonged to Ben during the war. Marion went every
day to give her an apple or lump of sugar, or carry her a bunch of clover.
The mare would follow her about like a cat.
Another attraction at the barn for them was Becky Sharpe, Ben’s setter.
She came to Marion one morning, wagging her tail, seized her dress and
led her into an empty stall, where beneath the trough lay sleeping
snugly ten little white-and-black spotted puppies.
The girl had never seen such a sight before and went into ecstasies.
Becky wagged her tail with pride at her compliments. Every morning
she would pull her gently into the stall just to hear her talk and laugh
and pet her babies.
Whatever election day meant to the men, to Marion it was one of
unalloyed happiness: she was to ride horseback alone and dance at her
first ball. Ben had taught her to ride, and told her she could take Queen
to Lover’s Leap and back alone. Trembling with joy, her beautiful face
wreathed in smiles, she led the mare to the pond in the edge of the lot
and watched her drink its pure spring water.
When he helped her to mount in front of the hotel under her mother’s
gaze, and saw her ride out of the gate, with the exquisite lines of her
little figure melting into the graceful lines of the mare’s glistening form,
he exclaimed:
“I declare, I don’t know which is the prettier, Marion or Queen!”
“I know,” was the mother’s soft answer.
“They are both thoroughbreds,” said Ben, watching them admiringly.
“Wait till you see her to-night in her first ball dress,” whispered Mrs.
Lenoir.
At noon Ben and Phil strolled to the polling-place to watch the progress
of the first election under negro rule. The Square was jammed with
shouting, jostling, perspiring negroes, men, women, and children. The
day was warm, and the African odour was supreme even in the open
air.
A crowd of two hundred were packed around a peddler’s box. There
were two of them—one crying the wares, and the other wrapping and
delivering the goods. They were selling a new patent poison for rats.
“I’ve only a few more bottles left now, gentlemen,” he shouted, “and the
polls will close at sundown. A great day for our brother in black. Two
years of army rations from the Freedman’s Bureau, with old army
clothes thrown in, and now the ballot—the priceless glory of American
citizenship. But better still the very land is to be taken from these proud
aristocrats and given to the poor down-trodden black man. Forty acres
and a mule—think of it! Provided, mind you—that you have a bottle of
my wonder-worker to kill the rats and save your corn for the mule. No
man can have the mule unless he has corn; and no man can have corn if
he has rats—and only a few bottles left——”
“Gimme one,” yelled a negro.
“Forty acres and a mule, your old masters to work your land and pay his
rent in corn, while you sit back in the shade and see him sweat.”
“Gimme er bottle and two er dem pictures!” bawled another candidate
for a mule.
The peddler handed him the bottle and the pictures and threw a handful
of his labels among the crowd. These labels happened to be just the size
of the ballots, having on them the picture of a dead rat lying on his back,
and above, the emblem of death, the crossbones and skull.
“Forty acres and a mule for every black man—why was I ever born
white? I never had no luck, nohow!”
Phil and Ben passed on nearer the polling-place, around which stood a
cordon of soldiers with a line of negro voters two hundred yards in
length extending back into the crowd.
The negro Leagues came in armed battalions and voted in droves,
carrying their muskets in their hands. Less than a dozen white men were
to be seen about the place.
The negroes, under the drill of the League and the Freedman’s Bureau,
protected by the bayonet, were voting to enfranchise themselves,
disfranchise their former masters, ratify a new constitution, and elect a
legislature to do their will. Old Aleck was a candidate for the House,
chief poll-holder, and seemed to be in charge of the movements of the
voters outside the booth as well as inside. He appeared to be
omnipresent, and his self-importance was a sight Phil had never
dreamed. He could not keep his eyes off him.
“By George, Cameron, he’s a wonder!” he laughed.
Aleck had suppressed as far as possible the story of the painted stakes
and the deed, after sending out warnings to the brethren to beware of
two enticing strangers. The surveyors had reaped a rich harvest and
passed on. Aleck made up his mind to go to Columbia, make the laws
himself, and never again trust a white man from the North or South. The
agent of the Freedman’s Bureau at Piedmont tried to choke him off the
ticket. The League backed him to a man. He could neither read nor
write, but before he took to whiskey he had made a specialty of revival
exhortation, and his mouth was the most effective thing about him. In
this campaign he was an orator of no mean powers. He knew what he
wanted, and he knew what his people wanted, and he put the thing in
words so plain that a wayfaring man, though a fool, couldn’t make any
mistake about it.
As he bustled past, forming a battalion of his brethren in line to march to
the polls, Phil followed his every movement with amused interest.
Besides being so bow-legged that his walk was a moving joke he was so
striking a negro in his personal appearance, he seemed to the young
Northerner almost a distinct type of man.
His head was small and seemed mashed on the sides until it bulged into
a double lobe behind. Even his ears, which he had pierced and hung
with red earbobs, seemed to have been crushed flat to the side of his
head. His kinked hair was wrapped in little hard rolls close to the skull
and bound tightly with dirty thread. His receding forehead was high
and indicated a cunning intelligence. His nose was broad and crushed
flat against his face. His jaws were strong and angular, mouth wide, and
lips thick, curling back from rows of solid teeth set obliquely in their
blue gums. The one perfect thing about him was the size and setting of
his mouth—he was a born African orator, undoubtedly descended from
a long line of savage spell-binders, whose eloquence in the palaver
houses of the jungle had made them native leaders. His thin spindle-
shanks supported an oblong, protruding stomach, resembling an elderly
monkey’s, which seemed so heavy it swayed his back to carry it.
The animal vivacity of his small eyes and the flexibility of his eyebrows,
which he worked up and down rapidly with every change of
countenance, expressed his eager desires.
He had laid aside his new shoes, which hurt him, and went barefooted
to facilitate his movements on the great occasion. His heels projected
and his foot was so flat that what should have been the hollow of it
made a hole in the dirt where he left his track.
He was already mellow with liquor, and was dressed in an old army
uniform and cap, with two horse pistols buckled around his waist. On a
strap hanging from his shoulder were strung a half-dozen tin canteens
filled with whiskey.
A disturbance in the line of voters caused the young men to move
forward to see what it meant.
Two negro troopers had pulled Jake out of the line, and were dragging
him toward old Aleck.
The election judge straightened himself up with great dignity:
“What wuz de rapscallion doin’?”
“In de line, tryin’ ter vote.”
“Fetch ’im befo’ de judgment bar,” said Aleck, taking a drink from one
of his canteens.
The troopers brought Jake before the judge.
“Tryin’ ter vote, is yer?”
“’Lowed I would.”
“You hear ’bout de great sassieties de Gubment’s fomentin’ in dis
country?”
“Yas, I hear erbout ’em.”
“Is yer er member er de Union League?”
“Na-sah. I’d rudder steal by myself. I doan’ lak too many in de party!”
“En yer ain’t er No’f Ca’liny gemmen, is yer—yer ain’t er member er de
‘Red Strings?’”
“Na-sah, I come when I’se called—dey doan’ hatter put er string on
me—ner er block, ner er collar, ner er chain, ner er muzzle——”
“Will yer ’splain ter dis cote——” railed Aleck.
“What cote? Dat ole army cote?” Jake laughed in loud peals that rang
over the square.
Aleck recovered his dignity and demanded angrily:
“Does yer belong ter de Heroes ob Americky?”
“Na-sah. I ain’t burnt nobody’s house ner barn yet, ner hamstrung no
stock, ner waylaid nobody atter night—honey, I ain’t fit ter jine. Heroes
ob Americky! Is you er hero?”
“Ef yer doan’ b’long ter no s’iety,” said Aleck with judicial deliberation,
“what is you?”
“Des er ole-fashun all-wool-en-er-yard-wide nigger dat stan’s by his ole
marster ’cause he’s his bes’ frien’, stays at home, en tends ter his own
business.”
“En yer pay no ’tenshun ter de orders I sent yer ter jine de League?”
“Na-sah. I ain’t er takin’ orders f’um er skeer-crow.”
Aleck ignored his insolence, secure in his power.
“You doan b’long ter no s’iety, what yer git in dat line ter vote for?”
“Ain’t I er nigger?”
“But yer ain’t de right kin’ er nigger. ‘Res’ dat man fer ‘sturbin’ de
peace.”
They put Jake in jail, persuaded his wife to leave him, and expelled him
from the Baptist church, all within the week.
As the troopers led Jake to prison, a young negro apparently about
fifteen years old approached Aleck, holding in his hand one of the
peddler’s rat labels, which had gotten well distributed among the
crowd. A group of negro boys followed him with these rat labels in their
hands, studying them intently.
“Look at dis ticket, Uncle Aleck,” said the leader.
“Mr. Alexander Lenoir, sah—is I yo’ uncle, nigger?”
The youth walled his eyes angrily.
“Den doan’ you call me er nigger!”
“Who’ yer talkin to, sah? You kin fling yer sass at white folks, but,
honey, yuse er projeckin’ wid death now!”
“I ain’t er nigger—I’se er gemman, I is,” was the sullen answer.
“How ole is you?” asked Aleck in milder tones.
“Me mudder say sixteen—but de Buro man say I’se twenty-one yistiddy,
de day ‘fo’ ’lection.”
“Is you voted to-day?”
“Yessah; vote in all de boxes ‘cept’n dis one. Look at dat ticket. Is dat de
straight ticket?”
Aleck, who couldn’t read the twelve-inch letters of his favourite bar-
room sign, took the rat label and examined it critically.
“What ail it?” he asked at length.
The boy pointed at the picture of the rat.
“What dat rat doin’, lyin’ dar on his back, wid his heels cocked up in de
air—’pear ter me lak a rat otter be standin’ on his feet!”
Aleck reëxamined it carefully, and then smiled benignly on the youth.
“De ignance er dese folks. What ud yer do widout er man lak me enjued
wid de sperit en de power ter splain tings?”
“You sho’ got de sperits,” said the boy impudently, touching a canteen.
Aleck ignored the remark and looked at the rat label smilingly.
“Ain’t we er votin’, ter-day, on de Constertooshun what’s ter take de
ballot away f’um de white folks en gib all de power ter de cullud
gemmen—I axes yer dat?”
The boy stuck his thumbs under his arms and walled his eyes.
“Yessah!”
“Den dat means de ratification ob de Constertooshun!”
Phil laughed, followed, and watched them fold their tickets, get in line,
and vote the rat labels.
Ben turned toward a white man with gray beard, who stood watching
the crowd.
He was a pious member of the Presbyterian church but his face didn’t
have a pious expression to-day. He had been refused the right to vote
because he had aided the Confederacy by nursing one of his wounded
boys.
He touched his hat politely to Ben.
“What do you think of it, Colonel Cameron?” he asked with a touch of
scorn.
“What’s your opinion, Mr. McAllister?”
“Well, Colonel, I’ve been a member of the church for over forty years.
I’m not a cussin’ man—but there’s a sight I never expected to live to see.
I’ve been a faithful citizen of this State for fifty years. I can’t vote, and a
nigger is to be elected to-day to represent me in the Legislature. Neither
you, Colonel, nor your father are good enough to vote. Every nigger in
this county sixteen years old and up voted to-day—I ain’t a cussing man,
and I don’t say it as a cuss word, but all I’ve got to say is, IF there BE
such a thing as a d—d shame—that’s it!”
“Mr. McAllister, the recording angel wouldn’t have made a mark had
you said it without the ‘IF.’”
“God knows what this country’s coming to—I don’t,” said the old man
bitterly. “I’m afraid to let my wife and daughter go out of the house, or
stay in it, without somebody with them.”
Ben leaned closer and whispered, as Phil approached:
“Come to my office to-night at ten o’clock; I want to see you on some
important business.”
The old man seized his hand eagerly.
“Shall I bring the boys?”
Ben smiled.
“No. I’ve seen them some time ago.”
 CHAPTER VII
BY THE LIGHT OF A TORCH
On the night of the election Mrs. Lenoir gave a ball at the hotel in
honour of Marion’s entrance into society. She was only in her sixteenth
year, yet older than her mother when mistress of her own household.
The only ambition the mother cherished was that she might win the love
of an honest man and build for herself a beautiful home on the site of the
cottage covered with trailing roses. In this home dream for Marion she
found a great sustaining joy to which nothing in the life of man answers.
The ball had its political significance which the military martinet who
commanded the post understood. It was the way the people of Piedmont
expressed to him and the world their contempt for the farce of an
election he had conducted, and their indifference as to the result he
would celebrate with many guns before midnight.
The young people of the town were out in force. Marion was a universal
favourite. The grace, charm, and tender beauty of the Southern girl of
sixteen were combined in her with a gentle and unselfish disposition.
Amid poverty that was pitiful, unconscious of its limitations, her
thoughts were always of others, and she was the one human being
everybody had agreed to love. In the village in which she lived wealth
counted for naught. She belonged to the aristocracy of poetry, beauty,
and intrinsic worth, and her people knew no other.
As she stood in the long dining-room, dressed in her first ball costume of
white organdy and lace, the little plump shoulders peeping through its
meshes, she was the picture of happiness. A half-dozen boys hung on
every word as the utterance of an oracle. She waved gently an old ivory
fan with white down on its edges in a way the charm of which is the
secret birthright of every Southern girl.
Now and then she glanced at the door for some one who had not yet
appeared.
Phil paid his tribute to her with genuine feeling, and Marion repaid him
by whispering:
“Margaret’s dressed to kill—all in soft azure blue—her rosy cheeks,
black hair, and eyes never shone as they do to-night. She doesn’t dance
on account of her Sunday-school—it’s all for you.”
Phil blushed and smiled.
“The preacher won’t be here?”
“Our rector will.”
“He’s a nice old gentleman. I’m fond of him. Miss Marion, your mother
is a genius. I hope she can plan these little affairs oftener.”
It was half-past ten o’clock when Ben Cameron entered the room with
Elsie a little ruffled at his delay over imaginary business at his office.
Ben answered her criticisms with a strange elation. She had felt a secret
between them and resented it.
At Mrs. Lenoir’s special request, he had put on his full uniform of a
Confederate Colonel in honour of Marion and the poem her father had
written of one of his gallant charges. He had not worn it since he fell that
day in Phil’s arms.
No one in the room had ever seen him in this Colonel’s uniform. Its
yellow sash with the gold fringe and tassels was faded and there were
two bullet holes in the coat. A murmur of applause from the boys, sighs
and exclamations from the girls swept the room as he took Marion’s
hand, bowed and kissed it. Her blue eyes danced and smiled on him
with frank admiration.
“Ben, you’re the handsomest thing I’ve ever seen!” she said softly.
“Thanks. I thought you had a mirror. I’ll send you one,” he answered,
slipping his arm around her and gliding away to the strains of a waltz.
The girl’s hand trembled as she placed it on his shoulder, her cheeks
were flushed, and her eyes had a wistful dreamy look in their depths.
When Ben rejoined Elsie and they strolled on the lawn, the military
commandant suddenly confronted them with a squad of soldiers.
“I’ll trouble you for those buttons and shoulder straps,” said the
Captain.
Elsie’s amber eyes began to spit fire. Ben stood still and smiled.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“That I will not be insulted by the wearing of this uniform to-day.”
“I dare you to touch it, coward, poltroon!” cried the girl, her plump little
figure bristling in front of her lover.
Ben laid his hand on her arm and gently drew her back to his side: “He
has the power to do this. It is a technical violation of law to wear them. I
have surrendered. I am a gentleman and I have been a soldier. He can
have his tribute. I’ve promised my father to offer no violence to the
military authority of the United States.”
He stepped forward, and the officer cut the buttons from his coat and
ripped the straps from his shoulders.
While the performance was going on, Ben quietly said:
“General Grant at Appomattox, with the instincts of a great soldier, gave
our men his spare horses and ordered that Confederate officers retain
their side-arms. The General is evidently not in touch with this force.”
“No: I’m in command in this county,” said the Captain.
“Evidently.”
When he had gone, Elsie’s eyes were dim. They strolled under the
shadow of the great oak and stood in silence, listening to the music
within and the distant murmur of the falls.
“Why is it, sweetheart, that a girl will persist in admiring brass
buttons?” Ben asked softly.
She raised her lips to his for a kiss and answered:
“Because a soldier’s business is to die for his country.”
As Ben led her back into the ballroom and surrendered her to a friend
for a dance, the first gun pealed its note of victory from the square in the
celebration of the triumph of the African slave over his white master.
Ben strolled out in the street to hear the news.
The Constitution had been ratified by an enormous majority, and a
Legislature elected composed of 101 negroes and 23 white men. Silas
Lynch had been elected Lieutenant-Governor, a negro Secretary of State,
a negro Treasurer, and a negro Justice of the Supreme Court.
When Bizzel, the wizzen-faced agent of the Freedman’s Bureau, made
this announcement from the courthouse steps, pandemonium broke
lose. An incessant rattle of musketry began in which ball cartridges were
used, the missiles whistling over the town in every direction. Yet within
half an hour the square was deserted and a strange quiet followed the
storm.
Old Aleck staggered by the hotel, his drunkenness having reached the
religious stage.
“Behold, a curiosity, gentlemen,” cried Ben to a group of boys who had
gathered, “a voter is come among us—in fact, he is the people, the king,
our representative elect, the Honourable Alexander Lenoir, of the county
of Ulster!”
“Gemmens, de Lawd’s bin good ter me,” said Aleck, weeping copiously.
“They say the rat labels were in a majority in this precinct—how was
that?” asked Ben.
“Yessah—dat what de scornful say—dem dat sets in de seat o’ de
scornful, but de Lawd er Hosts He fetch ’em low. Mistah Bissel de Buro
man count all dem rat votes right, sah—dey couldn’t fool him—he know
what dey mean—he count ’em all for me an’ de ratification.”
“Sure-pop!” said Ben; “if you can’t ratify with a rat, I’d like to know
why?”
“Dat’s what I tells ’em, sah.”
“Of course,” said Ben good-humouredly. “The voice of the people is the
voice of God—rats or no rats—if you know how to count.”
As old Aleck staggered away, the sudden crash of a volley of musketry
echoed in the distance.
“What’s that?” asked Ben, listening intently. The sound was
unmistakable to a soldier’s ear—that volley from a hundred rifles at a
single word of command. It was followed by a shot on a hill in the
distance, and then by a faint echo, farther still. Ben listened a few
moments and turned into the lawn of the hotel. The music suddenly
stopped, the tramp of feet echoed on the porch, a woman screamed, and
from the rear of the house came the cry:
“Fire! Fire!”
Almost at the same moment an immense sheet of flame shot skyward
from the big barn.
“My God!” groaned Ben. “Jake’s in jail to-night, and they’ve set the barn
on fire. It’s worth more than the house.”
The crowd rushed down the hill to the blazing building, Marion’s fleet
figure in its flying white dress leading the crowd.
The lowing of the cows and the wild neighing of the horses rang above
the roar of the flames.
Before Ben could reach the spot Marion had opened every stall. Two
cows leaped out to safety, but not a horse would move from its stall, and
each moment wilder and more pitiful grew their death cries.
Marion rushed to Ben, her eyes dilated, her face as white as the dress she
wore.
“Oh, Ben, Queen won’t come out! What shall I do?”
“You can do nothing, child. A horse won’t come out of a burning stable
unless he’s blindfolded. They’ll all be burned to death.”
“Oh! no!” the girl cried in agony.
“They’d trample you to death if you tried to get them out. It can’t be
helped. It’s too late.”
As Ben looked back at the gathering crowd, Marion suddenly snatched a
horse blanket, lying at the door, ran with the speed of a deer to the pond,
plunged in, sprang out, and sped back to the open door of Queen’s stall,
through which her shrill cry could be heard above the others.
As the girl ran toward the burning building, her thin white dress
clinging close to her exquisite form, she looked like the marble figure of
a sylph by the hand of some great master into which God had suddenly
breathed the breath of life.
As they saw her purpose, a cry of horror rose from the crowd, her
mother’s scream loud above the rest.
Ben rushed to catch her, shouting:
“Marion! Marion! She’ll trample you to death!”
He was too late. She leaped into the stall. The crowd held their breath.
There was a moment of awful suspense, and the mare sprang through
the open door with the little white figure clinging to her mane and
holding the blanket over her head.
A cheer rang above the roar of the flames. The girl did not loose her hold
until her beautiful pet was led to a place of safety, while she clung to her
neck and laughed and cried for joy. First her mother, then Margaret,
Mrs. Cameron, and Elsie took her in their arms.
As Ben approached the group, Elsie whispered to him: “Kiss her!”
Ben took her hand, his eyes full of unshed tears, and said:
“The bravest deed a woman ever did—you’re a heroine, Marion!”
Before she knew it he stooped and kissed her.
She was very still for a moment, smiled, trembled from head to foot,
blushed scarlet, took her mother by the hand, and without a word
hurried to the house.
Poor Becky was whining among the excited crowd and sought in vain
for Marion. At last she got Margaret’s attention, caught her dress in her
teeth and led her to a corner of the lot, where she had laid side by side
her puppies, smothered to death. She stood and looked at them with her
tail drooping, the picture of despair. Margaret burst into tears and called
Ben.
He bent and put his arm around the setter’s neck and stroked her head
with his hand. Looking at up his sister, he said:
“Don’t tell Marion of this. She can’t stand any more to-night.”
The crowd had all dispersed, and the flames had died down for want of
fuel. The odour of roasting flesh, pungent and acrid, still lingered a
sharp reminder of the tragedy.
Ben stood on the back porch, talking in low tones to his father.
“Will you join us now, sir? We need the name and influence of men of
your standing.”
“My boy, two wrongs never made a right. It’s better to endure awhile.
The sober commonsense of the Nation will yet save us. We must appeal
to it.”
“Eight more fires were seen from town to-night.”
“You only guess their origin.”
“I know their origin. It was done by the League at a signal as a
celebration of the election and a threat of terror to the county. One of our
men concealed a faithful negro under the floor of the school-house and
heard the plot hatched. We expected it a month ago—but hoped they
had given it up.”
“Even so, my boy, a secret society such as you have planned means a
conspiracy that may bring exile or death. I hate lawlessness and
disorder. We have had enough of it. Your clan means ultimately martial
law. At least we will get rid of these soldiers by this election. They have
done their worst to me, but we may save others by patience.”
“It’s the only way, sir. The next step will be a black hand on a white
woman’s throat!”
The doctor frowned. “Let us hope for the best. Your clan is the last act of
desperation.”
“But if everything else fail, and this creeping horror becomes a fact—
then what?”
“My boy, we will pray that God may never let us live to see the day!”
 CHAPTER VIII
THE RIOT IN THE MASTER’S HALL
Alarmed at the possible growth of the secret clan into which Ben had
urged him to enter, Dr. Cameron determined to press for relief from
oppression by an open appeal to the conscience of the Nation.
He called a meeting of conservative leaders in a Taxpayers’ Convention
at Columbia. His position as leader had been made supreme by the
indignities he had suffered, and he felt sure of his ability to accomplish
results. Every county in the State was represented by its best men in this
gathering at the Capitol.
The day he undertook to present his memorial to the Legislature was
one he never forgot. The streets were crowded with negroes who had
come to town to hear Lynch, the Lieutenant-Governor, speak in a mass-
meeting. Negro policemen swung their clubs in his face as he pressed
through the insolent throng up the street to the stately marble Capitol.
At the door a black, greasy trooper stopped him to parley. Every
decently dressed white man was regarded a spy.
As he passed inside the doors of the House of Representatives the rush
of foul air staggered him. The reek of vile cigars and stale whiskey,
mingled with the odour of perspiring negroes, was overwhelming. He
paused and gasped for breath.
The space behind the seats of the members was strewn with corks,
broken glass, stale crusts, greasy pieces of paper, and picked bones. The
hall was packed with negroes, smoking, chewing, jabbering, pushing,
perspiring.
A carpet-bagger at his elbow was explaining to an old darkey from
down east why his forty acres and a mule hadn’t come.
On the other side of him a big negro bawled:
“Dat’s all right! De cullud man on top!”
The doctor surveyed the hall in dismay. At first not a white member was
visible. The galleries were packed with negroes. The Speaker presiding
was a negro, the Clerk a negro, the doorkeepers negroes, the little pages
all coal-black negroes, the Chaplain a negro. The negro party consisted
of one hundred and one—ninety-four blacks and seven scallawags, who
claimed to be white. The remains of Aryan civilization were represented
by twenty-three white men from the Scotch-Irish hill counties.
The doctor had served three terms as the member from Ulster in this hall
in the old days, and its appearance now was beyond any conceivable
depth of degradation.
The ninety-four Africans, constituting almost its solid membership, were
a motley crew. Every negro type was there, from the genteel butler to
the clodhopper from the cotton and rice fields. Some had on second-
hand seedy frock-coats their old master had given them before the war,
glossy and threadbare. Old stovepipe hats, of every style in vogue since
Noah came out of the ark, were placed conspicuously on the desks or
cocked on the backs of the heads of the honourable members. Some
wore the coarse clothes of the field, stained with red mud.
Old Aleck, he noted, had a red woollen comforter wound round his neck
in place of a shirt or collar. He had tried to go barefooted, but the
Speaker had issued a rule that members should come shod. He was
easing his feet by placing his brogans under the desk, wearing only his
red socks.
Each member had his name painted in enormous gold letters on his
desk, and had placed beside it a sixty-dollar French imported spittoon.
Even the Congress of the United States, under the inspiration of Oakes
Ames and Speaker Colfax, could only afford one of domestic make,
which cost a dollar.
The uproar was deafening. From four to six negroes were trying to
speak at the same time. Aleck’s majestic mouth with blue gums and
projecting teeth led the chorus as he ambled down the aisle, his bow-legs
flying their red-sock ensigns.
The Speaker singled him out—his voice was something which simply
could not be ignored—rapped and yelled:
“De gemman from Ulster set down!”
Aleck turned crestfallen and resumed his seat, throwing his big flat feet
in their red woollens up on his desk and hiding his face behind their
enormous spread.
He had barely settled in his chair before a new idea flashed through his
head and up he jumped again:
“Mistah Speaker!” he bawled.
“Orda da!” yelled another.
“Knock ’im in de head!”
“Seddown, nigger!”
The Speaker pointed his gavel at Aleck and threatened him laughingly:
“Ef de gemman from Ulster doan set down I gwine call ’im ter orda!”
Uncle Aleck greeted this threat with a wild guffaw, which the whole
House about him joined in heartily. They laughed like so many hens
cackling—when one started the others would follow.
The most of them were munching peanuts, and the crush of hulls under
heavy feet added a subnote to the confusion like the crackle of a prairie
fire.
The ambition of each negro seemed to be to speak at least a half-dozen
times on each question, saying the same thing every time.
No man was allowed to talk five minutes without an interruption which
brought on another and another until the speaker was drowned in a
storm of contending yells. Their struggles to get the floor with bawlings,
bellowings, and contortions, and the senseless rap of the Speaker’s
gavel, were something appalling.
On this scene, through fetid smoke and animal roar, looked down from
the walls, in marble bas-relief, the still white faces of Robert Hayne and
George McDuffie, through whose veins flowed the blood of Scottish
kings, while over it brooded in solemn wonder the face of John Laurens,
whose diplomatic genius at the court of France won millions of gold for
our tottering cause, and sent a French fleet and army into the
Chesapeake to entrap Cornwallis at Yorktown.
The little group of twenty-three white men, the descendants of these
spirits, to whom Dr. Cameron had brought his memorial, presented a
pathetic spectacle. Most of them were old men, who sat in grim silence
with nothing to do or say as they watched the rising black tide, their
dignity, reserve, and decorum at once the wonder and the shame of the
modern world.
At least they knew that the minstrel farce being enacted on that floor
was a tragedy as deep and dark as was ever woven of the blood and
tears of a conquered people. Beneath those loud guffaws they could hear
the death rattle in the throat of their beloved State, barbarism strangling
civilization by brute force.
For all the stupid uproar, the black leaders of this mob knew what they
wanted. One of them was speaking now, the leader of the House, the
Honourable Napoleon Whipper.
Dr. Cameron had taken his seat in the little group of white members in
one corner of the chamber, beside an old friend from an adjoining
county whom he had known in better days.
“Now listen,” said his friend. “When Whipper talks he always says
something.”
“Mr. Speaker, I move you, sir, in view of the arduous duties which our
presiding officer has performed this week for the State, that he be
allowed one thousand dollars extra pay.”
The motion was put without debate and carried.
The Speaker then called Whipper to the Chair and made the same
motion, to give the Leader of the House an extra thousand dollars for
the performance of his heavy duties.
It was carried.
“What does that mean?” asked the doctor.
“Very simple; Whipper and the Speaker adjourned the House yesterday
afternoon to attend a horse race. They lost a thousand dollars each
betting on the wrong horse. They are recuperating after the strain. They
are booked for judges of the Supreme Court when they finish this job.
The negro mass-meeting to-night is to indorse their names for the
Supreme Bench.”
“Is it possible!” the doctor exclaimed.
When Whipper resumed his place at his desk, the introduction of bills
began. One after another were sent to the Speaker’s desk, a measure to
disarm the whites and equip with modern rifles a negro militia of 80,000
men; to make the uniform of Confederate gray the garb of convicts in
South Carolina, with a sign of the rank to signify the degree of crime; to
prevent any person calling another a “nigger”; to require men to remove
their hats in the presence of all officers, civil or military, and all
disfranchised men to remove their hats in the presence of voters; to force
black and whites to attend the same schools and open the State
University to negroes; to permit the intermarriage of whites and blacks;
and to inforce social equality.
Whipper made a brief speech on the last measure:
“Before I am through, I mean that it shall be known that Napoleon
Whipper is as good as any man in South Carolina. Don’t tell me that I
am not on an equality with any man God ever made.”
Dr. Cameron turned pale, and trembling with excitement, asked his
friend:
“Can that man pass such measures, and the Governor sign them?”
“He can pass anything he wishes. The Governor is his creature—a dirty
little scallawag who tore the Union flag from Fort Sumter, trampled it in
the dust, and helped raise the flag of Confederacy over it. Now he is
backed by the Government at Washington. He won his election by
dancing at negro balls and the purchase of delegates. His salary as
Governor is $3,500 a year, and he spends over $40,000. Comment is
unnecessary. This Legislature has stolen millions of dollars, and already
bankrupted the treasury. The day Howle was elected to the Senate of the
United States every negro on the floor had his roll of bills and some of
them counted it out on their desks. In your day the annual cost of the
State government was $400,000. This year it is $2,000,000. These thieves
steal daily. They don’t deny it. They simply dare you to prove it. The
writing paper on the desks cost $16,000. These clocks on the wall $600
each, and every little Radical newspaper in the State has been subsidized
in sums varying from $1,000 to $7,000. Each member is allowed to draw
for mileage, per diem, and ‘sundries.’ God only knows what the bill for
‘sundries’ will aggregate by the end of the session.”
“I couldn’t conceive of this!” exclaimed the doctor.
“I’ve only given you a hint. We are a conquered race. The iron hand of
Fate is on us. We can only wait for the shadows to deepen into night.
President Grant appears to be a babe in the woods. Schuyler Colfax, the
Vice-president, and Belknap, the Secretary of War, are in the saddle in
Washington. I hear things are happening there that are quite interesting.
Besides, Congress now can give little relief. The real lawmaking power
in America is the State Legislature. The State lawmaker enters into the
holy of holies of our daily life. Once more we are a sovereign State—a
sovereign negro State.”
“I fear my mission is futile,” said the doctor.
“It’s ridiculous—I’ll call for you to-night and take you to hear Lynch,
our Lieutenant-Governor. He is a remarkable man. Our negro Supreme
Court Judge will preside—”
Uncle Aleck, who had suddenly spied Dr. Cameron, broke in with a
laughing welcome:
“I ’clar ter goodness, Dr. Cammun, I didn’t know you wuz here, sah. I
sho’ glad ter see you. I axes yer ter come across de street ter my room; I
got sumfin’ pow’ful pertickler ter say ter you.”
The doctor followed Aleck out of the hall and across the street to his
room in a little boarding-house. His door was locked, and the windows
darkened by blinds. Instead of opening the blinds he lighted a lamp.
“Ob cose, Dr. Cammun, you say nuffin ’bout what I gwine tell you?”
“Certainly not, Aleck.”
The room was full of drygoods boxes. The space under the bed was
packed, and they were piled to the ceiling around the walls.
“Why, what’s all this, Aleck?”
The member from Ulster chuckled:
“Dr. Cammun, yu’se been er pow’ful frien’ ter me—gimme medicine
lots er times, en I hain’t nebber paid you nuttin’. I’se sho’ come inter de
kingdom now, en I wants ter pay my respects ter you, sah. Des look ober
dat paper, en mark what you wants, en I hab ’em sont home fur you.”
The member from Ulster handed his physician a printed list of more
than five hundred articles of merchandise. The doctor read it over with
amazement.
“I don’t understand it, Aleck. Do you own a store?”
“Na-sah, but we git all we wants fum mos’ eny ob ’em. Dem’s ‘sundries,’
sah, dat de Gubment gibs de members. We des orda what we needs. No
trouble ’tall, sah. De men what got de goods come roun’ en beg us ter
take ’em.”
The doctor smiled in spite of the tragedy back of the joke.
“Let’s see some of the goods, Aleck—are they first class?”
“Yessah; de bes’ goin’. I show you.”
He pulled out a number of boxes and bundles, exhibiting carpets, door
mats, hassocks, dog collars, cow bells, oilcloths, velvets, mosquito nets,
damask, Irish linen, billiard outfits, towels, blankets, flannels, quilts,
women’s hoods, hats, ribbons, pins, needles, scissors, dumb bells, skates,
crape skirt braids, tooth brushes, face powder, hooks and eyes, skirts,
bustles, chignons, garters, artificial busts, chemises, parasols, watches,
jewellery, diamond earrings, ivory-handled knives and forks, pistols and
guns, and a Webster’s Dictionary.
“Got lots mo’ in dem boxes nailed up dar—yessah, hit’s no use er lettin’
good tings go by yer when you kin des put out yer han’ en stop ’em!
Some er de members ordered horses en carriages, but I tuk er par er fine
mules wid harness en two buggies an er wagin. Dey ’roun at de libry
stable, sah.”
The doctor thanked Aleck for his friendly feeling, but told him it was, of
course, impossible for him at this time, being only a taxpayer and
neither a voter nor a member of the Legislature, to share in his supply of
“sundries.”
He went to the warehouse that night with his friend to hear Lynch,
wondering if his mind were capable of receiving another shock.
This meeting had been called to indorse the candidacy, for Justice of the
Supreme Court, of Napoleon Whipper, the Leader of the House, the
notorious negro thief and gambler, and of William Pitt Moses, an ex-
convict, his confederate in crime. They had been unanimously chosen
for the positions by a secret caucus of the ninety-four negro members of
the House. This addition to the Court, with the negro already a member,
would give a majority to the black man on the last Tribunal of Appeal.
The few white men of the party who had any sense of decency were in
open revolt at this atrocity. But their influence was on the wane. The
carpet-bagger shaped the first Convention and got the first plums of
office. Now the negro was in the saddle, and he meant to stay. There
were not enough white men in the Legislature to force a roll-call on a
division of the House. This meeting was an open defiance of all pale-
faces inside or outside party lines.
Every inch of space in the big cotton warehouse was jammed—a black
living cloud, pungent and piercing.
The distinguished Lieutenant-Governor, Silas Lynch, had not yet
arrived, but the negro Justice of the Supreme Court, Pinchback, was in
his seat as the presiding officer.
Dr. Cameron watched the movements of the black judge, already
notorious for the sale of his opinions, with a sense of sickening horror.
This man was but yesterday a slave, his father a medicine man in an
African jungle who decided the guilt or innocence of the accused by the
test of administering poison. If the poison killed the man, he was guilty;
if he survived, he was innocent. For four thousand years his land had
stood a solid bulwark of unbroken barbarism. Out of its darkness he had
been thrust upon the seat of judgment of the laws of the proudest and
highest type of man evolved in time. It seemed a hideous dream.
His thoughts were interrupted by a shout. It came spontaneous and
tremendous in its genuine feeling. The magnificent figure of Lynch, their
idol, appeared walking down the aisle escorted by the little scallawag
who was the Governor.
He took his seat on the platform with the easy assurance of conscious
power. His broad shoulders, superb head, and gleaming jungle eyes
held every man in the audience before he had spoken a word.
In the first masterful tones of his voice the doctor’s keen intelligence
caught the ring of his savage metal and felt the shock of his powerful
personality—a personality which had thrown to the winds every mask,
whose sole aim of life was sensual, whose only fears were of physical
pain and death, who could worship a snake and sacrifice a human
being.
His playful introduction showed him a child of Mystery, moved by
Voices and inspired by a Fetish. His face was full of good humour, and
his whole figure rippled with sleek animal vivacity. For the moment, life
was a comedy and a masquerade teeming with whims, fancies, ecstasies
and superstitions.
He held the surging crowd in the hollow of his hand. They yelled,
laughed, howled, or wept as he willed.
Now he painted in burning words the imaginary horrors of slavery until
the tears rolled down his cheeks and he wept at the sound of his own
voice. Every dusky hearer burst into tears and moans.
He stopped, suddenly brushed the tears from his eyes, sprang to the
edge of the platform, threw both arms above his head and shouted:
“Hosannah to the Lord God Almighty for Emancipation!”
Instantly five thousand negroes, as one man, were on their feet, shouting
and screaming. Their shouts rose in unison, swelled into a thunder peal,
and died away as one voice.
Dead silence followed, and every eye was again riveted on Lynch. For
two hours the doctor sat transfixed, listening and watching him sway
the vast audience with hypnotic power.
There was not one note of hesitation or of doubt. It was the challenge of
race against race to mortal combat. His closing words again swept every
negro from his seat and melted every voice into a single frenzied shout:
“Within five years,” he cried, “the intelligence and the wealth of this
mighty State will be transferred to the negro race. Lift up your heads.
The world is yours. Take it. Here and now I serve notice on every white
man who breathes that I am as good as he is. I demand, and I am going
to have, the privilege of going to see him in his house or his hotel, eating
with him and sleeping with him, and when I see fit, to take his daughter
in marriage!”
As the doctor emerged from the stifling crowd with his friend, he drew a
deep breath of fresh air, took from his pocket his conservative memorial,
picked it into little bits, and scattered them along the street as he walked
in silence back to his hotel.
 CHAPTER IX
AT LOVER’S LEAP
In spite of the pitiful collapse of old Stoneman under his stroke of
paralysis, his children still saw the unconquered soul shining in his
colourless eyes. They had both been on the point of confessing their love
affairs to him and joining in the inevitable struggle when he was
stricken. They knew only too well that he would not consent to a dual
alliance with the Camerons under the conditions of fierce hatreds and
violence into which the State had drifted. They were too high-minded to
consider a violation of his wishes while thus helpless, with his strange
eyes following them about in childlike eagerness. His weakness was
mightier than his iron will.
So, for eighteen months, while he slowly groped out of mental twilight,
each had waited—Elsie with a tender faith struggling with despair, and
Phil in a torture of uncertainty and fear.
In the meantime, the young Northerner had become as radical in his
sympathies with the Southern people as his father had ever been against
them. This power of assimilation has always been a mark of Southern
genius. The sight of the Black Hand on their throats now roused his
righteous indignation. The patience with which they endured was to
him amazing. The Southerner he had found to be the last man on earth
to become a revolutionist. All his traits were against it. His genius for
command, the deep sense of duty and honour, his hospitality, his
deathless love of home, his supreme constancy and sense of civic unity,
all combined to make him ultraconservative. He began now to see that it
was reverence for authority as expressed in the Constitution under
which slavery was established which made Secession inevitable.
Besides, the laziness and incapacity of the negro had been more than he
could endure. With no ties of tradition or habits of life to bind him, he
simply refused to tolerate them. In this feeling Elsie had grown early to
sympathize. She discharged Aunt Cindy for feeding her children from
the kitchen, and brought a cook and house girl from the North, while
Phil would employ only white men in any capacity.
In the desolation of negro rule the Cameron farm had become worthless.
The taxes had more than absorbed the income, and the place was only
kept from execution by the indomitable energy of Mrs. Cameron, who
made the hotel pay enough to carry the interest on a mortgage which
was increasing from season to season.
The doctor’s practice was with him a divine calling. He never sent bills
to his patients. They paid something if they had it. Now they had
nothing.
Ben’s law practice was large for his age and experience, but his clients
had no money.
While the Camerons were growing each day poorer, Phil was becoming
rich. His genius, skill, and enterprise had been quick to see the
possibilities of the waterpower. The old Eagle cotton mills had been
burned during the war. Phil organized the Eagle & Phœnix Company,
interested Northern capitalists, bought the falls, and erected two great
mills, the dim hum of whose spindles added a new note to the river’s
music. Eager, swift, modest, his head full of ideas, his heart full of faith,
he had pressed forward to success.
As the old Commoner’s mind began to clear, and his recovery was sure,
Phil determined to press his suit for Margaret’s hand to an issue.
Ben had dropped a hint of an interview of the Rev. Hugh McAlpin with
Dr. Cameron, which had thrown Phil into a cold sweat.
He hurried to the hotel to ask Margaret to drive with him that afternoon.
He would stop at Lover’s Leap and settle the question.
He met the preacher, just emerging from the door, calm, handsome,
serious, and Margaret by his side. The dark-haired beauty seemed
strangely serene. What could it mean? His heart was in his throat. Was
he too late? Wreathed in smiles when the preacher had gone, the girl’s
face was a riddle he could not solve.
To his joy, she consented to go.
As he left in his trim little buggy for the hotel, he stooped and kissed
Elsie, whispering:
“Make an offering on the altar of love for me, Sis!”
“You’re too slow. The prayers of all the saints will not save you!” she
replied with a laugh, throwing him a kiss as he disappeared in the dust.
As they drove through the great forest on the cliffs overlooking the river,
the Southern world seemed lit with new splendours to-day for the
Northerner. His heart beat with a strange courage. The odour of the
pines, their sighing music, the subtone of the falls below, the subtle life-
giving perfume of the fullness of summer, the splendour of the sun
gleaming through the deep foliage, and the sweet sensuous air, all
seemed incarnate in the calm, lovely face and gracious figure beside
him.
They took their seat on the old rustic built against the beech, which was
the last tree on the brink of the cliff. A hundred feet below flowed the
river, rippling softly along a narrow strip of sand which its current had
thrown against the rocks. The ledge of towering granite formed a cave
eighty feet in depth at the water’s edge. From this projecting wall,
tradition said a young Indian princess once leaped with her lover,
fleeing from the wrath of a cruel father who had separated them. The
cave below was inaccessible from above, being reached by a narrow
footpath along the river’s edge when entered a mile downstream.
The view from the seat, under the beech, was one of marvellous beauty.
For miles the broad river rolled in calm, shining glory seaward, its banks
fringed with cane and trees, while fields of corn and cotton spread in
waving green toward the distant hills and blue mountains of the west.
Every tree on this cliff was cut with the initials of generations of lovers
from Piedmont.
They sat in silence for awhile, Margaret idly playing with a flower she
had picked by the pathway, and Phil watching her devoutly. The
Southern sun had tinged her face the reddish warm hue of ripened fruit,
doubly radiant by contrast with her wealth of dark-brown hair. The
lustrous glance of her eyes, half veiled by their long lashes, and the
graceful, careless pose of her stately figure held him enraptured. Her
dress of airy, azure blue, so becoming to her dark beauty, gave Phil the
impression of eiderdown feathers of some rare bird of the tropics. He
felt that if he dared to touch her she might lift her wings and sail over
the cliff into the sky and forget to light again at his side.
“I am going to ask a very bold and impertinent question, Miss
Margaret,” Phil said with resolution. “May I?”
Margaret smiled incredulously.
“I’ll risk your impertinence, and decide as to its boldness.”
“Tell me, please, what that preacher said to you to-day.”
Margaret looked away, unable to suppress the merriment that played
about her eyes and mouth.
“Will you never breathe it to a soul if I do?”
“Never.”
“Honest Injun, here on the sacred altar of the princess?”
“On my honour.”
“Then I’ll tell you,” she said, biting her lips to keep back a laugh. “Mr.
McAlpin is very handsome and eloquent. I have always thought him the
best preacher we have ever had in Piedmont——”
“Yes, I know,” Phil interrupted with a frown. “He is very pious,” she
went on evenly, “and seeks Divine guidance in prayer in everything he
does. He called this morning to see me, and I was playing for him in the
little music-room off the parlour, when he suddenly closed the door and
said:
“‘Miss Margaret, I am going to take, this morning, the most important
step of my life——’
“Of course I hadn’t the remotest idea what he meant——
“‘Will you join me in a word of prayer?’ he asked, and knelt right down.
I was accustomed, of course, to kneel with him in family worship at his
pastoral calls, and so from habit I slipped to one knee by the piano stool,
wondering what on earth he was about. When he prayed with fervour
for the Lord to bless the great love with which he hoped to hallow my
life—I giggled. It broke up the meeting. He rose and asked me to marry
him. I told him the Lord hadn’t revealed it to me——”
Phil seized her hand and held it firmly. The smile died from the girl’s
face, her hand trembled, and the rose tint on her cheeks flamed to
scarlet.
“Margaret, my own, I love you,” he cried with joy. “You could have told
that story only to the one man whom you love—is it not true?”
“Yes. I’ve loved you always,” said the low, sweet voice.
“Always?” asked Phil through a tear.
“Before I saw you, when they told me you were as Ben’s twin brother,
my heart began to sing at the sound of your name——”
“Call it,” he whispered.
“Phil, my sweetheart!” she said with a laugh.
“How tender and homelike the music of your voice! The world has
never seen the match of your gracious Southern womanhood!
Snowbound in the North, I dreamed, as a child, of this world of eternal
sunshine. And now every memory and dream I’ve found in you.”
“And you won’t be disappointed in my simple ideal that finds its all
within a home?”
“No. I love the old-fashioned dream of the South. Maybe you have
enchanted me, but I love these green hills and mountains, these rivers
musical with cascade and fall, these solemn forests—but for the Black
Curse, the South would be to-day the garden of the world!”
“And you will help our people lift this curse?” softly asked the girl,
nestling closer to his side.
“Yes, dearest, thy people shall be mine! Had I a thousand wrongs to
cherish, I’d forgive them all for your sake. I’ll help you build here a new
South on all that’s good and noble in the old, until its dead fields
blossom again, its harbours bristle with ships, and the hum of a
thousand industries make music in every valley. I’d sing to you in
burning verse if I could, but it is not my way. I have been awkward and
slow in love, perhaps—but I’ll be swift in your service. I dream to make
dead stones and wood live and breathe for you, of victories wrung from
Nature that are yours. My poems will be deeds, my flowers the hard-
earned wealth that has a soul, which I shall lay at your feet.”
“Who said my lover was dumb?” she sighed, with a twinkle in her
shining eyes. “You must introduce me to your father soon. He must like
me as my father does you, or our dream can never come true.”
A pain gripped Phil’s heart, but he answered bravely:
“I will. He can’t help loving you.”
They stood on the rustic seat to carve their initials within a circle, high
on the old beechwood book of love.
“May I write it out in full—Margaret Cameron—Philip Stoneman?” he
asked.
“No—only the initials now—the full names when you’ve seen my father
and I’ve seen yours. Jeannie Campbell and Henry Lenoir were once
written thus in full, and many a lover has looked at that circle and
prayed for happiness like theirs. You can see there a new one cut over
the old, the bark has filled, and written on the fresh page is ‘Marion
Lenoir’ with the blank below for her lover’s name.”
Phil looked at the freshly cut circle and laughed:
“I wonder if Marion or her mother did that?”
“Her mother, of course.”
“I wonder whose will be the lucky name some day within it?” said Phil
musingly as he finished his own.
 CHAPTER X
A NIGHT HAWK
When the old Commoner’s private physician had gone and his mind
had fully cleared, he would sit for hours in the sunshine of the vine-clad
porch, asking Elsie of the village, its life, and its people. He smiled good-
naturedly at her eager sympathy for their sufferings as at the enthusiasm
of a child who could not understand. He had come possessed by a great
idea—events must submit to it. Her assurance that the poverty and
losses of the people were far in excess of the worst they had known
during the war was too absurd even to secure his attention.
He had refused to know any of the people, ignoring the existence of
Elsie’s callers. But he had fallen in love with Marion from the moment
he had seen her. The cold eye of the old fox hunter kindled with the fire
of his forgotten youth at the sight of this beautiful girl seated on the
glistening back of the mare she had saved from death.
As she rode through the village every boy lifted his hat as to passing
royalty, and no one, old or young, could allow her to pass without a cry
of admiration. Her exquisite figure had developed into the full tropic
splendour of Southern girlhood.
She had rejected three proposals from ardent lovers, on one of whom her
mother had quite set her heart. A great fear had grown in Mrs. Lenoir’s
mind lest she were in love with Ben Cameron. She slipped her arm
around her one day and timidly asked her.
A faint flush tinged Marion’s face up to the roots of her delicate blonde
hair, and she answered with a quick laugh:
“Mamma, how silly you are! You know I’ve always been in love with
Ben—since I can first remember. I know he is in love with Elsie
Stoneman. I am too young, the world too beautiful, and life too sweet to
grieve over my first baby love. I expect to dance with him at his
wedding, then meet my fate and build my own nest.”
Old Stoneman begged that she come every day to see him. He never
tired praising her to Elsie. As she walked gracefully up to the house one
afternoon, holding Hugh by the hand, he said to Elsie:
“Next to you, my dear, she is the most charming creature I ever saw.
Her tenderness for everything that needs help touches the heart of an
old lame man in a very soft spot.”
“I’ve never seen any one who could resist her,” Elsie answered. “Her
gloves may be worn, her feet clad in old shoes, yet she is always neat,
graceful, dainty, and serene. No wonder her mother worships her.”
Sam Ross, her simple friend, had stopped at the gate, and looked over
into the lawn as if afraid to come in.
When Marion saw Sam, she turned back to the gate to invite him in. The
keeper of the poor, a vicious-looking negro, suddenly confronted him,
and he shrank in terror close to the girl’s side.
“What you doin’ here, sah?” the black keeper railed. “Ain’t I done tole
you ’bout runnin’ away?”
“You let him alone,” Marion cried.
The negro pushed her roughly from his side and knocked Sam down.
The girl screamed for help, and old Stoneman hobbled down the steps,
following Elsie.
When they reached the gate, Marion was bending over the prostrate
form.
“Oh, my, my, I believe he’s killed him!” she wailed.
“Run for the doctor, sonny, quick,” Stoneman said to Hugh. The boy
darted away and brought Dr. Cameron.
“How dare you strike that man, you devil?” thundered the old
statesman.
“’Case I tole ’im ter stay home en do de wuk I put ’im at, en he all de
time runnin’ off here ter git somfin’ ter eat. I gwine frail de life outen
’im, ef he doan min’ me.”
“Well, you make tracks back to the Poorhouse. I’ll attend to this man,
and I’ll have you arrested for this before night,” said Stoneman, with a
scowl.
The black keeper laughed as he left.
“Not ’less you’se er bigger man dan Gubner Silas Lynch, you won’t!”
When Dr. Cameron had restored Sam, and dressed the wound on his
head where he had struck a stone in falling, Stoneman insisted that the
boy be put to bed.
Turning to Dr. Cameron, he asked:
“Why should they put a brute like this in charge of the poor?”
“That’s a large question, sir, at this time,” said the doctor politely, “and
now that you have asked it, I have some things I’ve been longing for an
opportunity to say to you.”
“Be seated, sir,” the old Commoner answered, “I shall be glad to hear
them.”
Elsie’s heart leaped with joy over the possible outcome of this appeal,
and she left the room with a smile for the doctor.
“First, allow me,” said the Southerner pleasantly, “to express my sorrow
at your long illness, and my pleasure at seeing you so well. Your
children have won the love of all our people and have had our deepest
sympathy in your illness.”
Stoneman muttered an inaudible reply, and the doctor went on:
“Your question brings up, at once, the problem of the misery and
degradation into which our country has sunk under negro rule——”
Stoneman smiled coldly and interrupted:
“Of course, you understand my position in politics, Doctor Cameron—I
am a Radical Republican.”
“So much the better,” was the response. “I have been longing for months
to get your ear. Your word will be all the more powerful if raised in our
behalf. The negro is the master of our State, county, city, and town
governments. Every school, college, hospital, asylum, and poorhouse is
his prey. What you have seen is but a sample. Negro insolence grows
beyond endurance. Their women are taught to insult their old mistresses
and mock their poverty as they pass in their old, faded dresses.
Yesterday a black driver struck a white child of six with his whip, and
when the mother protested, she was arrested by a negro policeman,
taken before a negro magistrate, and fined $10 for ‘insulting a
freedman.’”
Stoneman frowned: “Such things must be very exceptional.”
“They are everyday occurrences and cease to excite comment. Lynch, the
Lieutenant-Governor, who has bought a summer home here, is urging
this campaign of insult with deliberate purpose——”
The old man shook his head. “I can’t think the Lieutenant-Governor
guilty of such petty villainy.”
“Our school commissioner,” the doctor continued, “is a negro who can
neither read nor write. The black grand jury last week discharged a
negro for stealing cattle and indicted the owner for false imprisonment.
No such rate of taxation was ever imposed on a civilized people. A tithe
of it cost Great Britain her colonies. There are 5,000 homes in this
county—2,900 of them are advertised for sale by the sheriff to meet his
tax bills. This house will be sold next court day——”
Stoneman looked up sharply. “Sold for taxes?”
“Yes; with the farm which has always been Mrs. Lenoir’s support. In
part her loss came from the cotton tax. Congress, in addition to the
desolation of war, and the ruin of black rule, has wrung from the cotton
farmers of the South a tax of $67,000,000. Every dollar of this money
bears the stain of the blood of starving people. They are ready to give
up, or to spring some desperate scheme of resistance——”
The old man lifted his massive head and his great jaws came together
with a snap:
“Resistance to the authority of the National Government?”
“No; resistance to the travesty of government and the mockery of
civilization under which we are being throttled! The bayonet is now in
the hands of a brutal negro militia. The tyranny of military martinets
was child’s play to this. As I answered your call this morning I was
stopped and turned back in the street by the drill of a company of
negroes under the command of a vicious scoundrel named Gus who was
my former slave. He is the captain of this company. Eighty thousand
armed negro troops, answerable to no authority save the savage
instincts of their officers, terrorize the State. Every white company has
been disarmed and disbanded by our scallawag Governor. I tell you, sir,
we are walking on the crust of a volcano——”
Old Stoneman scowled as the doctor rose and walked nervously to the
window and back.
“An appeal from you to the conscience of the North might save us,” he
went on eagerly. “Black hordes of former slaves, with the intelligence of
children and the instincts of savages, armed with modern rifles, parade
daily in front of their unarmed former masters. A white man has no
right a negro need respect. The children of the breed of men who speak
the tongue of Burns and Shakespeare, Drake and Raleigh, have been
disarmed and made subject to the black spawn of an African jungle! Can
human flesh endure it? When Goth and Vandal barbarians overran
Rome, the negro was the slave of the Roman Empire. The savages of the
North blew out the light of Ancient Civilization, but in all the dark ages
which followed they never dreamed the leprous infamy of raising a
black slave to rule over his former master! No people in the history of
the world have ever before been so basely betrayed, so wantonly
humiliated and degraded!”
Stoneman lifted his head in amazement at the burst of passionate
intensity with which the Southerner poured out his protest.
“For a Russian to rule a Pole,” he went on, “a Turk to rule a Greek, or an
Austrian to dominate an Italian is hard enough, but for a thick-lipped,
flat-nosed, spindle-shanked negro, exuding his nauseating animal
odour, to shout in derision over the hearths and homes of white men
and women is an atrocity too monstrous for belief. Our people are yet
dazed by its horror. My God! when they realize its meaning, whose arm
will be strong enough to hold them?”
“I should think the South was sufficiently amused with resistance to
authority,” interrupted Stoneman.
“Even so. Yet there is a moral force at the bottom of every living race of
men. The sense of right, the feeling of racial destiny—these are
unconquered and unconquerable forces. Every man in South Carolina
to-day is glad that slavery is dead. The war was not too great a price for
us to pay for the lifting of its curse. And now to ask a Southerner to be
the slave of a slave——”
“And yet, Doctor,” said Stoneman coolly, “manhood suffrage is the one
eternal thing fixed in the nature of Democracy. It is inevitable.”
“At the price of racial life? Never!” said the Southerner, with fiery
emphasis. “This Republic is great, not by reason of the amount of dirt
we possess, the size of our census roll, or our voting register—we are
great because of the genius of the race of pioneer white freemen who
settled this continent, dared the might of kings, and made a wilderness
the home of Freedom. Our future depends on the purity of this racial
stock. The grant of the ballot to these millions of semi-savages and the
riot of debauchery which has followed are crimes against human
progress.”
“Yet may we not train him?” asked Stoneman.
“To a point, yes, and then sink to his level if you walk as his equal in
physical contact with him. His race is not an infant; it is a degenerate—
older than yours in time. At last we are face to face with the man whom
slavery concealed with its rags. Suffrage is but the new paper cloak with
which the Demagogue has sought to hide the issue. Can we assimilate
the negro? The very question is pollution. In Hayti no white man can
own land. Black dukes and marquises drive over them and swear at
them for getting under their wheels. Is civilization a patent cloak with
which law-tinkers can wrap an animal and make him a king?”
“But the negro must be protected by the ballot,” protested the statesman.
“The humblest man must have the opportunity to rise. The real issue is
Democracy.”
“The issue, sir, is Civilization! Not whether a negro shall be protected,
but whether Society is worth saving from barbarism.”
“The statesman can educate,” put in the Commoner.
The doctor cleared his throat with a quick little nervous cough he was in
the habit of giving when deeply moved.
“Education, sir, is the development of that which is. Since the dawn of
history the negro has owned the continent of Africa—rich beyond the
dream of poet’s fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare
black feet. Yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man
showed to him its glittering light. His land swarmed with powerful and
docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled. A hunter
by necessity, he never made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth
preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to
graze for an hour. In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of
lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud.
With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four
thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard
the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head,
gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond,
and yet he never dreamed a sail! He lived as his fathers lived—stole his
food, worked his wife, sold his children, ate his brother, content to
drink, sing, dance, and sport as the ape!
“And this creature, half child, half animal, the sport of impulse, whim,
and conceit, ‘pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw,’ a being who, left
to his will, roams at night and sleeps in the day, whose speech knows no
word of love, whose passions, once aroused, are as the fury of the
tiger—they have set this thing to rule over the Southern people——”
The doctor sprang to his feet, his face livid, his eyes blazing with
emotion. “Merciful God—it surpasses human belief!”
He sank exhausted in his chair, and, extending his hand in an eloquent
gesture, continued:
“Surely, surely, sir, the people of the North are not mad? We can yet
appeal to the conscience and the brain of our brethren of a common
race?”
Stoneman was silent as if stunned. Deep down in his strange soul he
was drunk with the joy of a triumphant vengeance he had carried locked
in the depths of his being, yet the intensity of this man’s suffering for a
people’s cause surprised and distressed him as all individual pain hurt
him.
Dr. Cameron rose, stung by his silence and the consciousness of the
hostility with which Stoneman had wrapped himself.
“Pardon my apparent rudeness, Doctor,” he said at length, extending his
hand. “The violence of your feeling stunned me for the moment. I’m
obliged to you for speaking. I like a plain-spoken man. I am sorry to
learn of the stupidity of the former military commandant in this town—
—”
“My personal wrongs, sir,” the doctor broke in, “are nothing!”
“I am sorry, too, about these individual cases of suffering. They are the
necessary incidents of a great upheaval. But may it not all come out right
in the end? After the Dark Ages, day broke at last. We have the printing
press, railroad, and telegraph—a revolution in human affairs. We may
do in years what it took ages to do in the past. May not the black man
speedily emerge? Who knows? An appeal to the North will be a waste of
breath. This experiment is going to be made. It is written in the book of
Fate. But I like you. Come to see me again.”
Dr. Cameron left with a heavy heart. He had grown a great hope in this
long-wished-for appeal to Stoneman. It had come to his ears that the old
man, who had dwelt as one dead in their village, was a power.
It was ten o’clock before the doctor walked slowly back to the hotel. As
he passed the armoury of the black militia, they were still drilling under
the command of Gus. The windows were open, through which came the
steady tramp of heavy feet and the cry of “Hep! Hep! Hep!” from the
Captain’s thick cracked lips. The full-dress officer’s uniform, with its
gold epaulets, yellow stripes, and glistening sword, only accentuated the
coarse bestiality of Gus. His huge jaws seemed to hide completely the
gold braid on his collar.
The doctor watched, with a shudder, his black bloated face covered with
perspiration and the huge hand gripping his sword.
They suddenly halted in double ranks and Gus yelled:
“Odah, arms!”
The butts of their rifles crashed to the floor with precision, and they
were allowed to break ranks for a brief rest.
They sang “John Brown’s Body,” and as its echoes died away a big
negro swung his rifle in a circle over his head, shouting:
“Here’s your regulator for white trash! En dey’s nine hundred ob ’em in
dis county!”
“Yas, Lawd!” howled another.
“We got ’em down now en we keep ’em dar, chile!” bawled another.
The doctor passed on slowly to the hotel. The night was dark, the streets
were without lights under their present rulers, and the stars were
hidden with swift-flying clouds which threatened a storm. As he passed
under the boughs of an oak in front of his house, a voice above him
whispered:
“A message for you, sir.”
Had the wings of a spirit suddenly brushed his cheek, he would not
have been more startled.
“Who are you?” he asked, with a slight tremor.
“A Night Hawk of the Invisible Empire, with a message from the Grand
Dragon of the Realm,” was the low answer, as he thrust a note in the
doctor’s hand. “I will wait for your answer.”
The doctor fumbled to his office on the corner of the lawn, struck a
match, and read:
“A great Scotch-Irish leader of the South from Memphis is here to-night
and wishes to see you. If you will meet General Forrest, I will bring him
to the hotel in fifteen minutes. Burn this. Ben.”
The doctor walked quickly back to the spot where he had heard the
voice, and said:
“I’ll see him with pleasure.”
The invisible messenger wheeled his horse, and in a moment the echo of
his muffled hoofs had died away in the distance.
 CHAPTER XI
THE BEAT OF A SPARROW’S WING
Dr. Cameron’s appeal had left the old Commoner unshaken in his idea.
There could be but one side to any question with such a man, and that
was his side. He would stand by his own men, too. He believed in his
own forces. The bayonet was essential to his revolutionary
programme—hence the hand which held it could do no wrong. Wrongs
were accidents which might occur under any system.
Yet in no way did he display the strange contradictions of his character
so plainly as in his inability to hate the individual who stood for the idea
he was fighting with maniac fury. He liked Dr. Cameron instantly,
though he had come to do a crime that would send him into beggared
exile.
Individual suffering he could not endure. In this the doctor’s appeal had
startling results.
He sent for Mrs. Lenoir and Marion.
“I understand, Madam,” he said gravely, “that your house and farm are
to be sold for taxes.”
“Yes, sir; we’ve given it up this time. Nothing can be done,” was the
hopeless answer.
“Would you consider an offer of twenty dollars an acre?”
“Nobody would be fool enough to offer it. You can buy all the land in
the county for a dollar an acre. It’s not worth anything.”
“I disagree with you,” said Stoneman cheerfully. “I am looking far
ahead. I would like to make an experiment here with Pennsylvania
methods on this land. I’ll give you ten thousand dollars cash for your
five hundred acres if you will take it.”
“You don’t mean it?” Mrs. Lenoir gasped, choking back the tears.
“Certainly. You can at once return to your home. I’ll take another house,
and invest your money for you in good Northern securities.”
The mother burst into sobs, unable to speak, while Marion threw her
arms impulsively around the old man’s neck and kissed him.
His cold eyes were warmed with the first tear they had shed in years.
He moved the next day to the Ross estate, which he rented, had Sam
brought back to the home of his childhood in charge of a good-natured
white attendant, and installed in one of the little cottages on the lawn.
He ordered Lynch to arrest the keeper of the poor, and hold him on a
charge of assault with intent to kill, awaiting the action of the Grand
Jury. The Lieutenant-Governor received this order with sullen anger—
yet he saw to its execution. He was not quite ready for a break with the
man who had made him.
Astonished at his new humour, Phil and Elsie hastened to confess to him
their love affairs and ask his approval of their choice. His reply was
cautious, yet he did not refuse his consent. He advised them to wait a
few months, allow him time to know the young people, and get his
bearings on the conditions of Southern society. His mood of tenderness
was a startling revelation to them of the depth and intensity of his love.
When Mrs. Lenoir returned with Marion to her vine-clad home, she
spent the first day of perfect joy since the death of her lover husband.
The deed had not yet been made of the transfer of the farm, but it was
only a question of legal formality. She was to receive the money in the
form of interest-bearing securities and deliver the title on the following
morning.
Arm in arm, mother and daughter visited again each hallowed spot,
with the sweet sense of ownership. The place was in perfect order. Its
flowers were in gorgeous bloom, its walks clean and neat, the fences
painted, and the gates swung on new hinges.
They stood with their arms about one another, watching the sun sink
behind the mountains, with tears of gratitude and hope stirring their
souls.
Ben Cameron strode through the gate, and they hurried to meet him
with cries of joy.
“Just dropped in a minute to see if you are snug for the night,” he said.
“Of course, snug and so happy we’ve been hugging one another for
hours,” said the mother. “Oh, Ben, the clouds have lifted at last!”
“Has Aunt Cindy come yet?” he asked.
“No, but she’ll be here in the morning to get breakfast. We don’t want
anything to eat,” she answered.
“Then I’ll come out when I’m through my business to-night, and sleep in
the house to keep you company.”
“Nonsense,” said the mother, “we couldn’t think of putting you to the
trouble. We’ve spent many a night here alone.”
“But not in the past two years,” he said with a frown.
“We’re not afraid,” Marion said with a smile. “Besides, we’d keep you
awake all night with our laughter and foolishness, rummaging through
the house.”
“You’d better let me,” Ben protested.
“No,” said the mother, “we’ll be happier to-night alone, with only God’s
eye to see how perfectly silly we can be. Come and take supper with us
to-morrow night. Bring Elsie and her guitar—I don’t like the banjo—and
we’ll have a little love feast with music in the moonlight.”
“Yes, do that,” cried Marion. “I know we owe this good luck to her. I
want to tell her how much I love her for it.”
“Well, if you insist on staying alone,” said Ben reluctantly, “I’ll bring
Miss Elsie to-morrow, but I don’t like your being here without Aunt
Cindy to-night.”
“Oh, we’re all right!” laughed Marion, “but what I want to know is what
you are doing out so late every night since you’ve come home, and
where you were gone for the past week?”
“Important business,” he answered soberly.
“Business—I expect!” she cried. “Look here, Ben Cameron, have you
another girl somewhere you’re flirting with?”
“Yes,” he answered slowly, coming closer and his voice dropping to a
whisper, “and her name is Death.”
“Why, Ben!” Marion gasped, placing her trembling hand unconsciously
on his arm, a faint flush mantling her cheek and leaving it white.
“What do you mean?” asked the mother in low tones.
“Nothing that I can explain. I only wish to warn you both never to ask
me such questions before any one.”
“Forgive me,” said Marion, with a tremor. “I didn’t think it serious.”
Ben pressed the little warm hand, watching her mouth quiver with a
smile that was half a sigh, as he answered:
“You know I’d trust either of you with my life, but I can’t be too
careful.”
“We’ll remember, Sir Knight,” said the mother. “Don’t forget, then, to-
morrow—and spend the evening with us. I wish I had one of Marion’s
new dresses done. Poor child, she has never had a decent dress in her
life before. You know I never look at my pretty baby grown to such a
beautiful womanhood without hearing Henry say over and over again—
‘Beauty is a sign of the soul—the body is the soul!’”
“Well, I’ve my doubts about your improving her with a fine dress,” he
replied thoughtfully. “I don’t believe that more beautifully dressed
women ever walked the earth than our girls of the South who came out
of the war clad in the pathos of poverty, smiling bravely through the
shadows, bearing themselves as queens though they wore the dress of
the shepherdess.”
“I’m almost tempted to kiss you for that, as you once took advantage of
me!” said Marion, with enthusiasm.
The moon had risen and a whippoorwill was chanting his weird song on
the lawn as Ben left them leaning on the gate.
It was past midnight before they finished the last touches in restoring
their nest to its old homelike appearance and sat down happy and tired
in the room in which Marion was born, brooding and dreaming and
talking over the future.
The mother was hanging on the words of her daughter, all the baffled
love of the dead poet husband, her griefs and poverty consumed in the
glowing joy of new hopes. Her love for this child was now a triumphant
passion, which had melted her own being into the object of worship,
until the soul of the daughter was superimposed on the mother’s as the
magnetized by the magnetizer.
“And you’ll never keep a secret from me, dear?” she asked Marion.
“Never.”
“You’ll tell me all your love affairs?” she asked softly, as she drew the
shining blonde head down on her shoulder.
“Faithfully.”
“You know I’ve been afraid sometimes you were keeping something
back from me, deep down in your heart—and I’m jealous. You didn’t
refuse Henry Grier because you loved Ben Cameron—now, did you?”
The little head lay still before she answered:
“How many times must I tell you, Silly, that I’ve loved Ben since I can
remember, that I will always love him, and when I meet my fate, at last,
I shall boast to my children of my sweet girl romance with the Hero of
Piedmont, and they shall laugh and cry with me over——”
“What’s that?” whispered the mother, leaping to her feet.
“I heard nothing,” Marion answered, listening.
“I thought I heard footsteps on the porch.”
“Maybe it’s Ben, who decided to come anyhow,” said the girl.
“But he’d knock!” whispered the mother.
The door flew open with a crash, and four black brutes leaped into the
room, Gus in the lead, with a revolver in his hand, his yellow teeth
grinning through his thick lips.
“Scream now, an’ I blow yer brains out,” he growled.
Blanched with horror, the mother sprang before Marion with a shivering
cry:
“What do you want?”
“Not you,” said Gus, closing the blinds and handing a rope to another
brute. “Tie de ole one ter de bedpost.”
The mother screamed. A blow from a black fist in her mouth, and the
rope was tied.
With the strength of despair she tore at the cords, half rising to her feet,
while with mortal anguish she gasped:
“For God’s sake, spare my baby! Do as you will with me, and kill me—
do not touch her!”
Again the huge fist swept her to the floor.
Marion staggered against the wall, her face white, her delicate lips
trembling with the chill of a fear colder than death.
“We have no money—the deed has not been delivered,” she pleaded, a
sudden glimmer of hope flashing in her blue eyes.
Gus stepped closer, with an ugly leer, his flat nose dilated, his sinister
bead eyes wide apart, gleaming apelike, as he laughed:
“We ain’t atter money!”
The girl uttered a cry, long, tremulous, heart-rending, piteous.
A single tiger spring, and the black claws of the beast sank into the soft
white throat and she was still.
 CHAPTER XII
AT THE DAWN OF DAY
It was three o’clock before Marion regained consciousness, crawled to
her mother, and crouched in dumb convulsions in her arms.
“What can we do, my darling?” the mother asked at last.
“Die—thank God, we have the strength left!”
“Yes, my love,” was the faint answer.
“No one must ever know. We will hide quickly every trace of crime.
They will think we strolled to Lover’s Leap and fell over the cliff, and
my name will always be sweet and clean—you understand—come, we
must hurry——”
With swift hands, her blue eyes shining with a strange light, the girl
removed the shreds of torn clothes, bathed, and put on the dress of
spotless white she wore the night Ben Cameron kissed her and called
her a heroine.
The mother cleaned and swept the room, piled the torn clothes and cord
in the fireplace and burned them, dressed herself as if for a walk, softly
closed the doors, and hurried with her daughter along the old pathway
through the moonlit woods.
At the edge of the forest she stopped and looked back tenderly at the
little home shining amid the roses, caught their faint perfume and
faltered:
“Let’s go back a minute—I want to see his room, and kiss Henry’s
picture again.”
“No, we are going to him now—I hear him calling us in the mists above
the cliff,” said the girl—“come, we must hurry. We might go mad and
fail!”
Down the dim cathedral aisles of the woods, hallowed by tender
memories, through which the poet lover and father had taught them to
walk with reverent feet and without fear, they fled to the old meeting-
place of Love.
On the brink of the precipice, the mother trembled, paused, drew back,
and gasped:
“Are you not afraid, my dear?”
“No; death is sweet now,” said the girl. “I fear only the pity of those we
love.”
“Is there no other way? We might go among strangers,” pleaded the
mother.
“We could not escape ourselves! The thought of life is torture. Only
those who hate me could wish that I live. The grave will be soft and cool,
the light of day a burning shame.”
“Come back to the seat a moment—let me tell you my love again,”
urged the mother. “Life still is dear while I hold your hand.”
As they sat in brooding anguish, floating up from the river valley came
the music of a banjo in a negro cabin, mingled with vulgar shout and
song and dance. A verse of the ribald senseless lay of the player echoed
above the banjo’s pert refrain:
“Chicken in de bread tray, pickin’ up dough;
Granny, will your dog bite? No, chile, no!”
The mother shivered and drew Marion closer.
“Oh, dear! oh, dear! has it come to this—all my hopes of your beautiful
life!”
The girl lifted her head and kissed the quivering lips.
“With what loving wonder we saw you grow,” she sighed, “from a
tottering babe on to the hour we watched the mystic light of
maidenhood dawn in your blue eyes—and all to end in this hideous,
leprous shame. No—No! I will not have it! It’s only a horrible dream!
God is not dead!”
The young mother sank to her knees and buried her face in Marion’s lap
in a hopeless paroxysm of grief.
The girl bent, kissed the curling hair, and smoothed it with her soft
hand.
A sparrow chirped in the tree above, a wren twittered in a bush, and
down on the river’s bank a mocking-bird softly waked his mate with a
note of thrilling sweetness. “The morning is coming, dearest; we must
go,” said Marion. “This shame I can never forget, nor will the world
forget. Death is the only way.”
They walked to the brink, and the mother’s arms stole round the girl.
“Oh, my baby, my beautiful darling, life of my life, heart of my heart,
soul of my soul!”
They stood for a moment, as if listening to the music of the falls, looking
out over the valley faintly outlining itself in the dawn. The first far-away
streaks of blue light on the mountain ranges, defining distance, slowly
appeared. A fresh motionless day brooded over the world as the
amorous stir of the spirit of morning rose from the moist earth of the
fields below.
A bright star still shone in the sky, and the face of the mother gazed on it
intently. Did the Woman-spirit, the burning focus of the fiercest desire to
live and will, catch in this supreme moment the star’s Divine speech
before which all human passions sink into silence? Perhaps, for she
smiled. The daughter answered with a smile; and then, hand in hand,
they stepped from the cliff into the mists and on through the opal gates
of death.
 Book IV—The Ku Klux Klan
CHAPTER I
THE HUNT FOR THE ANIMAL
Aunt Cindy came at seven o’clock to get breakfast, and finding the
house closed and no one at home, supposed Mrs. Lenoir and Marion
had remained at the Cameron House for the night. She sat down on the
steps, waited grumblingly an hour, and then hurried to the hotel to
scold her former mistress for keeping her out so long.
Accustomed to enter familiarly, she thrust her head into the dining-
room, where the family were at breakfast with a solitary guest,
muttering the speech she had been rehearsing on the way:
“I lak ter know what sort er way dis—whar’s Miss Jeannie?”
Ben leaped to his feet.
“Isn’t she at home?”
“Been waitin’ dar two hours.”
“Great God!” he groaned, springing through the door and rushing to
saddle the mare. As he left he called to his father: “Let no one know till I
return.”
At the house he could find no trace of the crime he had suspected. Every
room was in perfect order. He searched the yard carefully and under the
cedar by the window he saw the barefoot tracks of a negro. The white
man was never born who could make that track. The enormous heel
projected backward, and in the hollow of the instep where the dirt
would scarcely be touched by an Aryan was the deep wide mark of the
African’s flat foot. He carefully measured it, brought from an outhouse a
box, and fastened it over the spot.
It might have been an ordinary chicken thief, of course. He could not
tell, but it was a fact of big import. A sudden hope flashed through his
mind that they might have risen with the sun and strolled to their
favourite haunt at Lover’s Leap.
In two minutes he was there, gazing with hard-set eyes at Marion’s hat
and handkerchief lying on the shelving rock.
The mare bent her glistening neck, touched the hat with her nose, lifted
her head, dilated her delicate nostrils, looked out over the cliff with her
great soft half-human eyes and whinnied gently.
Ben leaped to the ground, picked up the handkerchief, and looked at the
initials, “M. L.,” worked in the corner. He knew what lay on the river’s
brink below as well as if he stood over the dead bodies. He kissed the
letters of her name, crushed the handkerchief in his locked hands, and
cried:
“Now, Lord God, give me strength for the service of my people!”
He hurriedly examined the ground, amazed to find no trace of a struggle
or crime. Could it be possible they had ventured too near the brink and
fallen over?
He hurried to report to his father his discoveries, instructed his mother
and Margaret to keep the servants quiet until the truth was known, and
the two men returned along the river’s brink to the foot of the cliff.
They found the bodies close to the water’s edge, Marion had been killed
instantly. Her fair blonde head lay in a crimson circle sharply defined in
the white sand. But the mother was still warm with life. She had scarcely
ceased to breathe. In one last desperate throb of love the trembling soul
had dragged the dying body to the girl’s side, and she had died with her
head resting on the fair round neck as though she had kissed her and
fallen asleep.
Father and son clasped hands and stood for a moment with uncovered
heads. The doctor said at length:
“Go to the coroner at once and see that he summons the jury you select
and hand to him. Bring them immediately. I will examine the bodies
before they arrive.”
Ben took the negro coroner into his office alone, turned the key, told him
of the discovery, and handed him the list of the jury.
“I’ll hatter see Mr. Lynch fust, sah,” he answered.
Ben placed his hand on his hip pocket and said coldly:
“Put your cross-mark on those forms I’ve made out there for you, go
with me immediately, and summon these men. If you dare put a negro
on this jury, or open your mouth as to what has occurred in this room,
I’ll kill you.”
The negro tremblingly did as he was commanded.
The coroner’s jury reported that the mother and daughter had been
killed by accidentally failing over the cliff.
In all the throng of grief-stricken friends who came to the little cottage
that day, but two men knew the hell-lit secret beneath the tragedy.
When the bodies reached the home, Doctor Cameron placed Mrs.
Cameron and Margaret outside to receive visitors and prevent any one
from disturbing him. He took Ben into the room and locked the doors.
“My boy, I wish you to witness an experiment.”
He drew from its case a powerful microscope of French make.
“What on earth are you going to do, sir?”
The doctor’s brilliant eyes flashed with a mystic light as he replied:
“Find the fiend who did this crime—and then we will hang him on a
gallows so high that all men from the rivers to ends of the earth shall see
and feel and know the might of an unconquerable race of men.”
“But there’s no trace of him here.”
“We shall see,” said the doctor, adjusting his instrument.
“I believe that a microscope of sufficient power will reveal on the retina
of these dead eyes the image of this devil as if etched there by fire. The
experiment has been made successfully in France. No word or deed of
man is lost. A German scholar has a memory so wonderful he can repeat
whole volumes of Latin, German, and French without an error. A
Russian officer has been known to repeat the roll-call of any regiment by
reading it twice. Psychologists hold that nothing is lost from the
memory of man. Impressions remain in the brain like words written on
paper in invisible ink. So I believe of images in the eye if we can trace
them early enough. If no impression were made subsequently on the
mother’s eye by the light of day, I believe the fire-etched record of this
crime can yet be traced.”
Ben watched him with breathless interest.
He first examined Marion’s eyes. But in the cold azure blue of their pure
depths he could find nothing.
“It’s as I feared with the child,” he said. “I can see nothing. It is on the
mother I rely. In the splendour of life, at thirty-seven she was the full-
blown perfection of womanhood, with every vital force at its highest
tension——”
He looked long and patiently into the dead mother’s eye, rose and
wiped the perspiration from his face.
“What is it, sir?” asked Ben.
Without reply, as if in a trance, he returned to the microscope and again
rose with the little, quick, nervous cough he gave only in the greatest
excitement, and whispered:
“Look now and tell me what you see.”
Ben looked and said:
“I can see nothing.”
“Your powers of vision are not trained as mine,” replied the doctor,
resuming his place at the instrument.
“What do you see?” asked the younger man, bending nervously.
“The bestial figure of a negro—his huge black hand plainly defined—the
upper part of the face is dim, as if obscured by a gray mist of dawn—but
the massive jaws and lips are clear—merciful God—yes—it’s Gus!”
The doctor leaped to his feet livid with excitement.
Ben bent again, looked long and eagerly, but could see nothing.
“I’m afraid the image is in your eye, sir, not the mother’s,” said Ben
sadly.
“That’s possible, of course,” said the doctor, “yet I don’t believe it.”
“I’ve thought of the same scoundrel and tried blood hounds on that
track, but for some reason they couldn’t follow it. I suspected him from
the first, and especially since learning that he left for Columbia on the
early morning train on pretended official business.”
“Then I’m not mistaken,” insisted the doctor, trembling with excitement.
“Now do as I tell you. Find when he returns. Capture him, bind, gag,
and carry him to your meeting-place under the cliff, and let me know.”
On the afternoon of the funeral, two days later, Ben received a cypher
telegram from the conductor on the train telling him that Gus was on the
evening mail due at Piedmont at nine o’clock.
The papers had been filled with accounts of the accident, and an
enormous crowd from the county and many admirers of the fiery lyrics
of the poet father had come from distant parts to honour his name. All
business was suspended, and the entire white population of the village
followed the bodies to their last resting-place.
As the crowds returned to their homes, no notice was taken of a dozen
men on horseback who rode out of town by different ways about dusk.
At eight o’clock they met in the woods near the first little flag-station
located on McAllister’s farm four miles from Piedmont, where a buggy
awaited them. Two men of powerful build, who were strangers in the
county, alighted from the buggy and walked along the track to board the
train at the station three miles beyond and confer with the conductor.
The men, who gathered in the woods, dismounted, removed their
saddles, and from the folds of the blankets took a white disguise for
horse and man. In a moment it was fitted on each horse, with buckles at
the throat, breast, and tail, and the saddles replaced. The white robe for
the man was made in the form of an ulster overcoat with cape, the skirt
extending to the top of the shoes. From the red belt at the waist were
swung two revolvers which had been concealed in their pockets. On
each man’s breast was a scarlet circle within which shone a white cross.
The same scarlet circle and cross appeared on the horse’s breast, while
on his flanks flamed the three red mystic letters, K. K. K. Each man wore
a white cap, from the edges of which fell a piece of cloth extending to the
shoulders. Beneath the visor was an opening for the eyes and lower
down one for the mouth. On the front of the caps of two of the men
appeared the red wings of a hawk as the ensign of rank. From the top of
each cap rose eighteen inches high a single spike held erect by a twisted
wire. The disguises for man and horse were made of cheap unbleached
domestic and weighed less than three pounds. They were easily folded
within a blanket and kept under the saddle in a crowd without
discovery. It required less than two minutes to remove the saddles, place
the disguises, and remount.
At the signal of a whistle, the men and horses arrayed in white and
scarlet swung into double-file cavalry formation and stood awaiting
orders. The moon was now shining brightly, and its light shimmering on
the silent horses and men with their tall spiked caps made a picture such
as the world had not seen since the Knights of the Middle Ages rode on
their Holy Crusades.
As the train neared the flag-station, which was dark and unattended, the
conductor approached Gus, leaned over, and said: “I’ve just gotten a
message from the sheriff telling me to warn you to get off at this station
and slip into town. There’s a crowd at the depot there waiting for you
and they mean trouble.”
Gus trembled and whispered:
“Den fur Gawd’s sake lemme off here.”
The two men who got on at the station below stepped out before the
negro, and as he alighted from the car, seized, tripped, and threw him to
the ground. The engineer blew a sharp signal, and the train pulled on.
In a minute Gus was bound and gagged.
One of the men drew a whistle and blew twice. A single tremulous call
like the cry of an owl answered. The swift beat of horses’ feet followed,
and four white-and-scarlet clansmen swept in a circle around the group.
One of the strangers turned to the horseman with red-winged ensign on
his cap, saluted, and said:
“Here’s your man, Night Hawk.”
“Thanks, gentlemen,” was the answer. “Let us know when we can be of
service to your county.”
The strangers sprang into their buggy and disappeared toward the
North Carolina line.
The clansmen blindfolded the negro, placed him on a horse, tied his legs
securely, and his arms behind him to the ring in the saddle.
The Night Hawk blew his whistle four sharp blasts, and his pickets
galloped from their positions and joined him.
Again the signal rang, and his men wheeled with the precision of
trained cavalrymen into column formation three abreast, and rode
toward Piedmont, the single black figure tied and gagged in the centre
of the white-and-scarlet squadron.
 CHAPTER II
THE FIERY CROSS
The clansmen with their prisoner skirted the village and halted in the
woods on the river bank. The Night Hawk signalled for single file, and
in a few minutes they stood against the cliff under Lover’s Leap and
saluted their chief, who sat his horse, awaiting their arrival.
Pickets were placed in each direction on the narrow path by which the
spot was approached, and one was sent to stand guard on the shelving
rock above.
Through the narrow crooked entrance they led Gus into the cave which
had been the rendezvous of the Piedmont Den of the Clan since its
formation. The meeting-place was a grand hall eighty feet deep, fifty feet
wide, and more than forty feet in height, which had been carved out of
the stone by the swift current of the river in ages past when its waters
stood at a higher level.
To-night it was lighted by candles placed on the ledges of the walls. In
the centre, on a fallen boulder, sat the Grand Cyclops of the Den, the
presiding officer of the township, his rank marked by scarlet stripes on
the white-cloth spike of his cap. Around him stood twenty or more
clansmen in their uniform, completely disguised. One among them wore
a yellow sash, trimmed in gold, about his waist, and on his breast two
yellow circles with red crosses interlapping, denoting his rank to be the
Grand Dragon of the Realm, or Commander-in-Chief of the State.
The Cyclops rose from his seat:
“Let the Grand Turk remove his prisoner for a moment and place him in
charge of the Grand Sentinel at the door, until summoned.”
The officer disappeared with Gus, and the Cyclops continued:
“The Chaplain will open our Council with prayer.”
Solemnly every white-shrouded figure knelt on the ground, and the
voice of the Rev. Hugh McAlpin, trembling with feeling, echoed through
the cave:
“Lord God of our Fathers, as in times past thy children, fleeing from the
oppressor, found refuge beneath the earth until once more the sun of
righteousness rose, so are we met to-night. As we wrestle with the
powers of darkness now strangling our life, give to our souls to endure
as seeing the invisible, and to our right arms the strength of the
martyred dead of our people. Have mercy on the poor, the weak, the
innocent and defenceless, and deliver us from the body of the Black
Death. In a land of light and beauty and love our women are prisoners
of danger and fear. While the heathen walks his native heath unharmed
and unafraid, in this fair Christian Southland our sisters, wives, and
daughters dare not stroll at twilight through the streets or step beyond
the highway at noon. The terror of the twilight deepens with the
darkness, and the stoutest heart grows sick with fear for the red message
the morning bringeth. Forgive our sins—they are many—but hide not
thy face from us, O God, for thou art our refuge!”
As the last echoes of the prayer lingered and died in the vaulted roof,
the clansmen rose and stood a moment in silence.
Again the voice of the Cyclops broke the stillness:
“Brethren, we are met to-night at the request of the Grand Dragon of the
Realm, who has honoured us with his presence, to constitute a High
Court for the trial of a case involving life. Are the Night Hawks ready to
submit their evidence?”
“We are ready,” came the answer.
“Then let the Grand Scribe read the objects of the Order on which your
authority rests.”
The Scribe opened his Book of Record, “The Prescript of the Order of the
Invisible Empire,” and solemnly read:
“To the lovers of law and order, peace and justice, and to the shades of
the venerated dead, greeting:
“This is an institution of Chivalry, Humanity, Mercy, and Patriotism:
embodying in its genius and principles all that is chivalric in conduct,
noble in sentiment, generous in manhood, and patriotic in purpose: its
particular objects being,
“First: To protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenceless from the
indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the
brutal; to relieve the injured and the oppressed: to succour the suffering
and unfortunate, and especially the widows and the orphans of
Confederate Soldiers.
“Second: To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,
and all the laws passed in conformity thereto, and to protect the States
and the people thereof from all invasion from any source whatever.
“Third: To aid and assist in the execution of all Constitutional laws, and
to protect the people from unlawful seizure, and from trial except by
their peers in conformity to the laws of the land.”
“The Night Hawks will produce their evidence,” said the Cyclops, “and
the Grand Monk will conduct the case of the people against the negro
Augustus Cæsar, the former slave of Dr. Richard Cameron.”
Dr. Cameron advanced and removed his cap. His snow-white hair and
beard, ruddy face and dark-brown brilliant eyes made a strange picture
in its weird surroundings, like an ancient alchemist ready to conduct
some daring experiment in the problem of life.
“I am here, brethren,” he said, “to accuse the black brute about to appear
of the crime of assault on a daughter of the South——”
A murmur of thrilling surprise and horror swept the crowd of white-
and-scarlet figures as with one common impulse they moved closer.
“His feet have been measured and they exactly tally with the negro
tracks found under the window of the Lenoir cottage. His flight to
Columbia and return on the publication of their deaths as an accident is
a confirmation of our case. I will not relate to you the scientific
experiment which first fixed my suspicion of this man’s guilt. My
witness could not confirm it, and it might not be to you credible. But this
negro is peculiarly sensitive to hypnotic influence. I propose to put him
under this power to-night before you, and, if he is guilty, I can make him
tell his confederates, describe and rehearse the crime itself.”
The Night Hawks led Gus before Doctor Cameron, untied his hands,
removed the gag, and slipped the blindfold from his head.
Under the doctor’s rigid gaze the negro’s knees struck together, and he
collapsed into complete hypnosis, merely lifting his huge paws lamely
as if to ward a blow.
They seated him on the boulder from which the Cyclops rose, and Gus
stared about the cave and grinned as if in a dream seeing nothing.
The doctor recalled to him the day of the crime, and he began to talk to
his three confederates, describing his plot in detail, now and then
pausing and breaking into a fiendish laugh.
Old McAllister, who had three lovely daughters at home, threw off his
cap, sank to his knees, and buried his face in his hands, while a dozen of
the white figures crowded closer, nervously gripping the revolvers
which hung from their red belts.
Doctor Cameron pushed them back and lifted his hand in warning.
The negro began to live the crime with fearful realism—the journey past
the hotel to make sure the victims had gone to their home; the visit to
Aunt Cindy’s cabin to find her there; lying in the field waiting for the
last light of the village to go out; gloating with vulgar exultation over
their plot, and planning other crimes to follow its success—how they
crept along the shadows of the hedgerow of the lawn to avoid the
moonlight, stood under the cedar, and through the open windows
watched the mother and daughter laughing and talking within——
“Min’ what I tells you now—Tie de ole one, when I gib you de rope,”
said Gus in a whisper.
“My God!” cried the agonized voice of the figure with the double
cross—“that’s what the piece of burnt rope in the fireplace meant!”
Doctor Cameron again lifted his hand for silence.
Now they burst into the room, and with the light of hell in his beady,
yellow-splotched eyes, Gus gripped his imaginary revolver and
growled:
“Scream, an’ I blow yer brains out!”
In spite of Doctor Cameron’s warning, the white-robed figures jostled
and pressed closer——
Gus rose to his feet and started across the cave as if to spring on the
shivering figure of the girl, the clansmen with muttered groans, sobs,
and curses falling back as he advanced. He still wore his full Captain’s
uniform, its heavy epaulets flashing their gold in the unearthly light, his
beastly jaws half covering the gold braid on the collar. His thick lips
were drawn upward in an ugly leer and his sinister bead eyes gleamed
like a gorilla’s. A single fierce leap and the black claws clutched the air
slowly as if sinking into the soft white throat.
Strong men began to cry like children.
“Stop him! Stop him!” screamed a clansman, springing on the negro and
grinding his heel into his big thick neck. A dozen more were on him in a
moment, kicking, stamping, cursing, and crying like madmen.
Doctor Cameron leaped forward and beat them off:
“Men! Men! You must not kill him in this condition!”
Some of the white figures had fallen prostrate on the ground, sobbing in
a frenzy of uncontrollable emotion. Some were leaning against the walls,
their faces buried in their arms.
Again old McAllister was on his knees crying over and over again:
“God have mercy on my people!”
When at length quiet was restored, the negro was revived, and again
bound, blindfolded, gagged, and thrown to the ground before the Grand
Cyclops.
A sudden inspiration flashed in Doctor Cameron’s eyes. Turning to the
figure with yellow sash and double cross he said:
“Issue your orders and despatch your courier to-night with the old
Scottish rite of the Fiery Cross. It will send a thrill of inspiration to every
clansman in the hills.”
“Good—prepare it quickly!” was the answer.
Doctor Cameron opened his medicine case, drew the silver drinking-
cover from a flask, and passed out of the cave to the dark circle of blood
still shining in the sand by the water’s edge. He knelt and filled the cup
half full of the crimson grains, and dipped it into the river. From a
saddle he took the lightwood torch, returned within, and placed the cup
on the boulder on which the Grand Cyclops had sat. He loosed the
bundle of lightwood, took two pieces, tied them into the form of a cross,
and laid it beside a lighted candle near the silver cup.
The silent figures watched his every movement. He lifted the cup and
said:
“Brethren, I hold in my hand the water of your river bearing the red
stain of the life of a Southern woman, a priceless sacrifice on the altar of
outraged civilization. Hear the message of your chief.”
The tall figure with the yellow sash and double cross stepped before the
strange altar, while the white forms of the clansmen gathered about him
in a circle. He lifted his cap, and laid it on the boulder, and his men
gazed on the flushed face of Ben Cameron, the Grand Dragon of the
Realm.
He stood for a moment silent, erect, a smouldering fierceness in his eyes,
something cruel and yet magnetic in his alert bearing.
He looked on the prostrate negro lying in his uniform at his feet, seized
the cross, lighted the three upper ends and held it blazing in his hand,
while, in a voice full of the fires of feeling, he said:
“Men of the South, the time for words has passed, the hour for action
has struck. The Grand Turk will execute this negro to-night and fling his
body on the lawn of the black Lieutenant-Governor of the State.”
The Grand Turk bowed.
“I ask for the swiftest messenger of this Den who can ride till dawn.”
The man whom Doctor Cameron had already chosen stepped forward:
“Carry my summons to the Grand Titan of the adjoining province in
North Carolina whom you will find at Hambright. Tell him the story of
this crime and what you have seen and heard. Ask him to report to me
here the second night from this, at eleven o’clock, with six Grand Giants
from his adjoining counties, each accompanied by two hundred picked
men. In olden times when the Chieftain of our people summoned the
clan on an errand of life and death, the Fiery Cross, extinguished in
sacrificial blood, was sent by swift courier from village to village. This
call was never made in vain, nor will it be to-night, in the new world.
Here, on this spot made holy ground by the blood of those we hold
dearer than life, I raise the ancient symbol of an unconquered race of
men——”
High above his head in the darkness of the cave he lifted the blazing
emblem——
“The Fiery Cross of old Scotland’s hills! I quench its flames in the
sweetest blood that ever stained the sands of Time.”
He dipped its ends in the silver cup, extinguished the fire, and handed
the charred symbol to the courier, who quickly disappeared.
 CHAPTER III
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
The discovery of the Captain of the African Guards lying in his full
uniform in Lynch’s yard send a thrill of terror to the triumphant leagues.
Across the breast of the body was pinned a scrap of paper on which was
written in red ink the letters K. K. K. It was the first actual evidence of
the existence of this dreaded order in Ulster county.
The First Lieutenant of the Guards assumed command and held the full
company in their armoury under arms day and night. Beneath his door
he had found a notice which was also nailed on the courthouse. It
appeared in the Piedmont Eagle and in rapid succession in every
newspaper not under negro influence in the State. It read as follows:
“HEADQUARTERS OF REALM NO 4.
”DREADFUL ERA, BLACK EPOCH,
“HIDEOUS HOUR.
“GENERAL ORDER NO. I.
“The Negro Militia now organized in this State threatens the extinction
of civilization. They have avowed their purpose to make war upon and
exterminate the Ku Klux Klan, an organization which is now the sole
guardian of Society. All negroes are hereby given forty-eight hours from
the publication of this notice in their respective counties to surrender
their arms at the courthouse door. Those who refuse must take the
consequences.
“By order of the G. D. of Realm No. 4.
“By the Grand Scribe.”
The white people of Piedmont read this notice with a thrill of exultant
joy. Men walked the streets with an erect bearing which said without
words:
“Stand out of the way.”
For the first time since the dawn of Black Rule negroes began to yield to
white men and women the right of way on the streets.
On the day following, the old Commoner sent for Phil.
“What is the latest news?” he asked.
“The town is in a fever of excitement—not over the discovery in Lynch’s
yard—but over the blacker rumour that Marion and her mother
committed suicide to conceal an assault by this fiend.”
“A trumped-up lie,” said the old man emphatically.
“It’s true, sir. I’ll take Doctor Cameron’s word for it.”
“You have just come from the Camerons?”
“Yes.”
“Let it be your last visit. The Camerons are on the road to the gallows,
father and son. Lynch informs me that the murder committed last night,
and the insolent notice nailed on the courthouse door, could have come
only from their brain. They are the hereditary leaders of these people.
They alone would have the audacity to fling this crime into the teeth of
the world and threaten worse. We are face to face with Southern
barbarism. Every man now to his own standard! The house of Stoneman
can have no part with midnight assassins.”
“Nor with black barbarians, father. It is a question of who possesses the
right of life and death over the citizen, the organized virtue of the
community, or its organized crime. You have mistaken for death the
patience of a generous people. We call ourselves the champions of
liberty. Yet for less than they have suffered, kings have lost their heads
and empires perished before the wrath of freemen.”
“My boy, this is not a question for argument between us,” said the father
with stern emphasis. “This conspiracy of terror and assassination
threatens to shatter my work to atoms. The election on which turns the
destiny of Congress, and the success or failure of my life, is but a few
weeks away. Unless this foul conspiracy is crushed, I am ruined, and the
Nation falls again beneath the heel of a slaveholders’ oligarchy.”
“Your nightmare of a slaveholders’ oligarchy does not disturb me.”
“At least you will have the decency to break your affair with Margaret
Cameron pending the issue of my struggle of life and death with her
father and brother?”
“Never.”
“Then I will do it for you.”
“I warn you, sir,” Phil cried, with anger, “that if it comes to an issue of
race against race, I am a white man. The ghastly tragedy of the condition
of society here is something for which the people of the South are no
longer responsible——”
“I’ll take the responsibility!” growled the old cynic.
“Don’t ask me to share it,” said the younger man emphatically.
The father winced, his lips trembled, and he answered brokenly:
“My boy, this is the bitterest hour of my life that has had little to make it
sweet. To hear such words from you is more than I can bear. I am an old
man now—my sands are nearly run. But two human beings love me,
and I love but two. On you and your sister I have lavished all the
treasures of a maimed and strangled soul—and it has come to this! Read
the notice which one of your friends thrust into the window of my
bedroom last night.”
He handed Phil a piece of paper on which was written:
“The old club-footed beast who has sneaked into our town, pretending
to search for health, in reality the leader of the infernal Union League,
will be given forty-eight hours to vacate the house and rid this
community of his presence.
“K. K. K.”
“Are you an officer of the Union League?” Phil asked in surprise.
“I am its soul.”
“How could a Southerner discover this, if your own children didn’t
know it?”
“By their spies who have joined the League.”
“And do the rank and file know the Black Pope at the head of the
order?”
“No, but high officials do.”
“Does Lynch?”
“Certainly.”
“Then he is the scoundrel who placed that note in your room. It is a
clumsy attempt to forge an order of the Klan. The white man does not
live in this town capable of that act. I know these people.”
“My boy, you are bewitched by the smiles of a woman to deny your
own flesh and blood.”
“Nonsense, father—you are possessed by an idea which has become an
insane mania——”
“Will you respect my wishes?” the old man broke in angrily.
“I will not,” was the clear answer. Phil turned and left the room, and the
old man’s massive head sank on his breast in helpless baffled rage and
grief.
He was more successful in his appeal to Elsie. He convinced her of the
genuineness of the threat against him. The brutal reference to his
lameness roused the girl’s soul. When the old man, crushed by Phil’s
desertion, broke down the last reserve of his strange cold nature, tore his
wounded heart open to her, cried in agony over his deformity, his
lameness, and the anguish with which he saw the threatened ruin of his
life-work, she threw her arms around his neck in a flood of tears and
cried:
“Hush, father, I will not desert you. I will never leave you, or wed
without your blessing. If I find that my lover was in any way responsible
for this insult, I’ll tear his image out of my heart and never speak his
name again!”
She wrote a note to Ben, asking him to meet her at sundown on
horseback at Lover’s Leap.
Ben was elated at the unexpected request. He was hungry for an hour
with his sweetheart, whom he had not seen save for a moment since the
storm of excitement broke following the discovery of the crime.
He hastened through his work of ordering the movement of the Klan for
the night, and determined to surprise Elsie by meeting her in his
uniform of a Grand Dragon.
Secure in her loyalty, he would deliberately thus put his life in her
hands. Using the water of a brook in the woods for a mirror, he adjusted
his yellow sash and pushed the two revolvers back under the cape out of
sight, saying to himself with a laugh:
“Betray me? Well, if she does, life would not be worth the living!”
When Elsie had recovered from the first shock of surprise at the white
horse and rider waiting for her under the shadows of the old beech, her
surprise gave way to grief at the certainty of his guilt, and the greatness
of his love in thus placing his life without a question in her hands.
He tied the horses in the woods, and they sat down on the rustic.
He removed his helmet cap, threw back the white cape showing the
scarlet lining, and the two golden circles with their flaming crosses on
his breast, with boyish pride. The costume was becoming to his slender
graceful figure, and he knew it.
“You see, sweetheart, I hold high rank in the Empire,” he whispered.
From beneath his cape he drew a long bundle which he unrolled. It was
a triangular flag of brilliant yellow edged in scarlet. In the centre of the
yellow ground was the figure of a huge black dragon with fiery red eyes
and tongue. Around it was a Latin motto worked in scarlet: “quod
semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus”—what always, what
everywhere, what by all has been held to be true. “The battle-flag of the
Klan,” he said; “the standard of the Grand Dragon.”
Elsie seized his hand and kissed it, unable to speak.
“Why so serious to-night?”
“Do you love me very much?” she answered.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay his life at the feet of his
beloved,” he responded tenderly.
“Yes, yes; I know—and that is why you are breaking my heart. When
first I met you—it seems now ages and ages ago—I was a vain, self-
willed, pert little thing——”
“It’s not so. I took you for an angel—you were one. You are one to-
night.”
“Now,” she went on slowly, “in what I have lived through you I have
grown into an impassioned, serious, self-disciplined, bewildered
woman. Your perfect trust to-night is the sweetest revelation that can
come to a woman’s soul and yet it brings to me unspeakable pain——”
“For what?”
“You are guilty of murder.”
Ben’s figure stiffened.
“The judge who pronounces sentence of death on a criminal outlawed
by civilized society is not usually called a murderer, my dear.”
“And by whose authority are you a judge?”
“By authority of the sovereign people who created the State of South
Carolina. The criminals who claim to be our officers are usurpers placed
there by the subversion of law.”
“Won’t you give this all up for my sake?” she pleaded. “Believe me, you
are in great danger.”
“Not so great as is the danger of my sister and mother and my
sweetheart—it is a man’s place to face danger,” he gravely answered.
“This violence can only lead to your ruin and shame——”
“I am fighting the battle of a race on whose fate hangs the future of the
South and the Nation. My ruin and shame will be of small account if
they are saved,” was the even answer.
“Come, my dear,” she pleaded tenderly, “you know that I have weighed
the treasures of music and art and given them all for one clasp of your
hand, one throb of your heart against mine. I should call you cruel did I
not know you are infinitely tender. This is the only thing I have ever
asked you to do for me——”
“Desert my people! You must not ask of me this infamy, if you love me,”
he cried.
“But, listen; this is wrong—this wild vengeance is a crime you are doing,
however great the provocation. We cannot continue to love one another
if you do this. Listen: I love you better than father, mother, life, or
career—all my dreams I’ve lost in you. I’ve lived through eternity to-day
with my father——”
“You know me guiltless of the vulgar threat against him——”
“Yes, and yet you are the leader of desperate men who might have done
it. As I fought this battle to-day, I’ve lost you, lost myself, and sunk
down to the depths of despair, and at the end rang the one weak cry of a
woman’s heart for her lover! Your frown can darken the brightest sky.
For your sake I can give up all save the sense of right. I’ll walk by your
side in life—lead you gently and tenderly along the way of my dreams if
I can, but if you go your way, it shall be mine; and I shall still be glad
because you are there! See how humble I am—only you must not
commit crime!”
“Come, sweetheart, you must not use that word,” he protested, with a
touch of wounded pride.
“You are a conspirator——”
“I am a revolutionist.”
“You are committing murder!”
“I am waging war.”
Elsie leaped to her feet in a sudden rush of anger and extended her
hand:
“Good-bye. I shall not see you again. I do not know you. You are still a
stranger to me.”
He held her hand firmly.
“We must not part in anger,” he said slowly. “I have grave work to do
before the day dawns. We may not see each other again.”
She led her horse to the seat quickly and without waiting for his
assistance sprang into the saddle.
“Do you not fear my betrayal of your secret?” she asked.
He rode to her side, bent close, and whispered:
“It’s as safe as if locked in the heart of God.”
A little sob caught her voice, yet she said slowly in firm tones:
“If another crime is committed in this county by your Klan, we will
never see each other again.”
He escorted her to the edge of the town without a word, pressed her
hand in silence, wheeled his horse, and disappeared on the road to the
North Carolina line.
 CHAPTER IV
THE BANNER OF THE DRAGON
Ben Cameron rode rapidly to the rendezvous of the pickets who were to
meet the coming squadrons.
He returned home and ate a hearty meal. As he emerged from the
dining-room, Phil seized him by the arm and led him under the big oak
on the lawn:
“Cameron, old boy, I’m in a lot of trouble. I’ve had a quarrel with my
father, and your sister has broken me all up by returning my ring. I want
a little excitement to ease my nerves. From Elsie’s incoherent talk I judge
you are in danger. If there’s going to be a fight, let me in.”
Ben took his hand:
“You’re the kind of a man I’d like to have for a brother, and I’ll help you
in love—but as for war—it’s not your fight. We don’t need help.”
At ten o’clock Ben met the local Den at their rendezvous under the cliff,
to prepare for the events of the night.
The forty members present were drawn up before him in double rank of
twenty each.
“Brethren,” he said to them solemnly, “I have called you to-night to take
a step from which there can be no retreat. We are going to make a daring
experiment of the utmost importance. If there is a faint heart among you,
now is the time to retire——”
“We are with you!” cried the men.
“There are laws of our race, old before this Republic was born in the
souls of white freemen. The fiat of fools has repealed on paper these
laws. Your fathers who created this Nation were first Conspirators, then
Revolutionists, now Patriots and Saints. I need to-night ten volunteers to
lead the coming clansmen over this county and disarm every negro in it.
The men from North Carolina cannot be recognized. Each of you must
run this risk. Your absence from home to-night will be doubly
dangerous for what will be done here at this negro armoury under my
command. I ask of these ten men to ride their horses until dawn, even
unto death, to ride for their God, their native land, and the womanhood
of the South!
“To each man who accepts this dangerous mission I offer for your bed
the earth, for your canopy the sky, for your bread stones; and when the
flash of bayonets shall fling into your face from the Square the challenge
of martial law, the protection I promise you—is exile, imprisonment,
and death! Let the ten men who accept these terms step forward four
paces.”
With a single impulse the whole double line of forty white-and-scarlet
figures moved quickly forward four steps!
The leader shook hands with each man, his voice throbbing with
emotion as he said:
“Stand together like this, men, and armies will march and countermarch
over the South in vain! We will save the life of our people.”
The ten guides selected by the Grand Dragon rode forward, and each led
a division of one hundred men through the ten townships of the county
and successfully disarmed every negro before day without the loss of a
life.
The remaining squadron of two hundred and fifty men from Hambright,
accompanied by the Grand Titan in command of the Province of
Western Hill Counties, were led by Ben Cameron into Piedmont as the
waning moon rose between twelve and one o’clock.
They marched past Stoneman’s place on the way to the negro armoury,
which stood on the opposite side of the street a block below.
The wild music of the beat of a thousand hoofs on the cobblestones of
the street waked every sleeper. The old Commoner hobbled to his
window and watched them pass, his big hands fumbling nervously, and
his soul stirred to its depths.
The ghostlike shadowy columns moved slowly with the deliberate
consciousness of power. The scarlet circles on their breasts could be
easily seen when one turned toward the house, as could the big red
letters K. K. K. on each horse’s flank.
In the centre of the line waved from a gold-tipped spear the battle-flag of
the Klan. As they passed the bright lights burning at his gate, old
Stoneman could see this standard plainly. The huge black dragon with
flaming eyes and tongue seemed a living thing crawling over a scarlet-
tipped yellow cloud.
At the window above stood a little figure watching that banner of the
Dragon pass with aching heart.
Phil stood at another, smiling with admiration for their daring:
“By George, it stirs the blood to see it! You can’t crush men of that
breed!”
The watchers were not long in doubt as to what the raiders meant.
They deployed quickly around the armoury. A whistle rang its shrill cry,
and a volley of two hundred and fifty carbines and revolvers smashed
every glass in the building. The sentinel had already given the alarm,
and the drum was calling the startled negroes to their arms. They
returned the volley twice, and for ten minutes were answered with the
steady crack of two hundred and fifty guns. A white flag appeared at the
door, and the firing ceased. The negroes laid down their arms and
surrendered. All save three were allowed to go to their homes for the
night and carry their wounded with them.
The three confederates in the crime of their captain were bound and led
away. In a few minutes the crash of a volley told their end.
The little white figure rapped at Phil’s door and placed a trembling hand
on his arm:
“Phil,” she said softly, “please go to the hotel and stay until you know
all that has happened—until you know the full list of those killed and
wounded. I’ll wait. You understand?”
As he stooped and kissed her, he felt a hot tear roll down her cheek.
“Yes, little Sis, I understand,” he answered.
 CHAPTER V
THE REIGN OF THE KLAN
In quick succession every county followed the example of Ulster, and
the arms furnished the negroes by the State and National governments
were in the hands of the Klan. The League began to collapse in a panic of
terror.
A gale of chivalrous passion and high action, contagious and
intoxicating, swept the white race. The moral, mental, and physical
earthquake which followed the first assault on one of their daughters
revealed the unity of the racial life of the people. Within the span of a
week they had lived a century.
The spirit of the South “like lightning had at last leaped forth, half
startled at itself, its feet upon the ashes and the rags,” its hands tight-
gripped on the throat of tyrant, thug, and thief.
It was the resistless movement of a race, not of any man or leader of
men. The secret weapon with which they struck was the most terrible
and efficient in human history—these pale hosts of white-and-scarlet
horsemen! They struck shrouded in a mantle of darkness and terror.
They struck where the power of resistance was weakest and the blow
least suspected. Discovery or retaliation was impossible. Not a single
disguise was ever penetrated. All was planned and ordered as by
destiny. The accused was tried by secret tribunal, sentenced without a
hearing, executed in the dead of night without warning, mercy, or
appeal. The movements of the Klan were like clockwork, without a
word, save the whistle of the Night Hawk, the crack of his revolver, and
the hoofbeat of swift horses moving like figures in a dream, and
vanishing in mists and shadows.
The old club-footed Puritan, in his mad scheme of vengeance and party
power, had overlooked the Covenanter, the backbone of the South. This
man had just begun to fight! His race had defied the Crown of Great
Britain a hundred years from the caves and wilds of Scotland and
Ireland, taught the English people how to slay a king and build a
commonwealth, and, driven into exile into the wilderness of America,
led our Revolution, peopled the hills of the South, and conquered the
West.
As the young German patriots of 1812 had organized the great struggle
for their liberties under the noses of the garrisons of Napoleon, so Ben
Cameron had met the leaders of his race in Nashville, Tennessee, within
the picket lines of thirty-five thousand hostile troops, and in the ruins of
an old homestead discussed and adopted the ritual of the Invisible
Empire.
Within a few months this Empire overspread a territory larger than
modern Europe. In the approaching election it was reaching out its
daring white hands to tear the fruits of victory from twenty million
victorious conquerors.
The triumph at which they aimed was one of incredible grandeur. They
had risen to snatch power out of defeat and death. Under their clan
leadership the Southern people had suddenly developed the courage of
the lion, the cunning of the fox, and the deathless faith of religious
enthusiasts.
Society was fused in the white heat of one sublime thought and beat
with the pulse of the single will of the Grand Wizard of the Klan of
Memphis.
Women and children had eyes and saw not, ears and heard not. Over
four thousand disguises for men and horses were made by the women
of the South, and not one secret ever passed their lips!
With magnificent audacity, infinite patience, and remorseless zeal, a
conquered people were struggling to turn his own weapon against their
conqueror, and beat his brains out with the bludgeon he had placed in
the hands of their former slaves.
Behind the tragedy of Reconstruction stood the remarkable man whose
iron will alone had driven these terrible measures through the chaos of
passion, corruption, and bewilderment which followed the first
assassination of an American President. As he leaned on his window in
this village of the South and watched in speechless rage the struggle at
that negro armoury, he felt for the first time the foundations sinking
beneath his feet. As he saw the black cowards surrender in terror, noted
the indifference and cool defiance with which those white horsemen
rode and shot, he knew that he had collided with the ultimate force
which his whole scheme had overlooked.
He turned on his big club foot from the window, clinched his fist and
muttered:
“But I’ll hang that man for this deed if it’s the last act of my life!”
The morning brought dismay to the negro, the carpet-bagger, and the
scallawag of Ulster. A peculiar freak of weather in the early morning
added to their terror. The sun rose clear and bright except for a slight fog
that floated from the river valley, increasing the roar of the falls. About
nine o’clock a huge black shadow suddenly rushed over Piedmont from
the west, and in a moment the town was shrouded in twilight. The cries
of birds were hushed and chickens went to roost as in a total eclipse of
the sun. Knots of people gathered on the streets and gazed uneasily at
the threatening skies. Hundreds of negroes began to sing and shout and
pray, while sensible people feared a cyclone or cloud-burst. A furious
downpour of rain was swiftly followed by sunshine, and the negroes
rose from their knees, shouting with joy to find the end of the world had
after all been postponed.
But that the end of their brief reign in a white man’s land had come, but
few of them doubted. The events of the night were sufficiently eloquent.
The movement of the clouds in sympathy was unnecessary.
Old Stoneman sent for Lynch, and found he had fled to Columbia. He
sent for the only lawyer in town whom the Lieutenant-Governor had
told him could be trusted.
The lawyer was polite, but his refusal to undertake the prosecution of
any alleged member of the Klan was emphatic.
“I’m a sinful man, sir,” he said with a smile. “Besides, I prefer to live, on
general principles.”
“I’ll pay you well,” urged the old man, “and if you secure the conviction
of Ben Cameron, the man we believe to be the head of this Klan, I’ll give
you ten thousand dollars.”
The lawyer was whittling on a piece of pine meditatively.
“That’s a big lot of money in these hard times. I’d like to own it, but I’m
afraid it wouldn’t be good at the bank on the other side. I prefer the
green fields of South Carolina to those of Eden. My harp isn’t in tune.”
Stoneman snorted in disgust:
“Will you ask the Mayor to call to see me at once?”
“We ain’t got none,” was the laconic answer.
“What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you heard what happened to his Honour last night?”
“No.”
“The Klan called to see him,” went on the lawyer with a quizzical look
“at 3 A. M. Rather early for a visit of state. They gave him forty-nine
lashes on his bare back, and persuaded him that the climate of Piedmont
didn’t agree with him. His Honour, Mayor Bizzel, left this morning with
his negro wife and brood of mulatto children for his home, the slums of
Cleveland, Ohio. We are deprived of his illustrious example, and he may
not be a wiser man than when he came, but he’s a much sadder one.”
Stoneman dismissed the even-tempered member of the bar, and wired
Lynch to return immediately to Piedmont. He determined to conduct the
prosecution of Ben Cameron in person. With the aid of the Lieutenant-
Governor he succeeded in finding a man who would dare to swear out a
warrant against him.
As a preliminary skirmish he was charged with a violation of the
statutory laws of the United States relating to Reconstruction and
arraigned before a Commissioner.
Against Elsie’s agonizing protest, old Stoneman appeared at the
courthouse to conduct the prosecution.
In the absence of the United States Marshal, the warrant had been placed
in the hands of the sheriff, returnable at ten o’clock on the morning fixed
for the trial. The new sheriff of Ulster was no less a personage than
Uncle Aleck, who had resigned his seat in the House to accept the more
profitable one of High Sheriff of the County.
There was a long delay in beginning the trial. At 10:30 not a single
witness summoned had appeared, nor had the prisoner seen fit to
honour the court with his presence.
Old Stoneman sat fumbling his hands in nervous, sullen rage, while Phil
looked on with amusement.
“Send for the sheriff,” he growled to the Commissioner.
In a moment Aleck appeared bowing humbly and politely to every
white man he passed. He bent halfway to the floor before the
Commissioner and said:
“Marse Ben be here in er minute, sah. He’s er eatin’ his breakfus’. I run
erlong erhead.”
Stoneman’s face was a thundercloud as he scrambled to his feet and
glared at Aleck:
“Marse Ben? Did you say Marse Ben? Who’s he?”
Aleck bowed low again.
“De young Colonel, sah—Marse Ben Cameron.”
“And you the sheriff of this county trotted along in front to make the
way smooth for your prisoner?”
“Yessah!”
“Is that the way you escort prisoners before a court?”
“Dem kin’ er prisoners—yessah.”
“Why didn’t you walk beside him?”
Aleck grinned from ear to ear and bowed very low:
“He say sumfin’ to me, sah!”
“And what did he say?”
Aleck shook his head and laughed:
“I hates ter insinuate ter de cote, sah!”
“What did he say to you?” thundered Stoneman.
“He say—he say—ef I walk ’longside er him—he knock hell outen me,
sah!”
“Indeed.”
“Yessah, en I ‘spec’ he would,” said Aleck insinuatingly. “La, he’s a
gemman, sah, he is! He tell me he come right on. He be here sho’.”
Stoneman whispered to Lynch, turned with a look of contempt to Aleck,
and said:
“Mr. Sheriff, you interest me. Will you be kind enough to explain to this
court what has happened to you lately to so miraculously change your
manners?”
Aleck glanced around the room nervously.
“I seed sumfin’—a vision, sah!”
“A vision? Are you given to visions?”
“Na-sah. Dis yere wuz er sho’ ’nuff vision! I wuz er feelin’ bad all day
yistiddy. Soon in de mawnin’, ez I wuz gwine ’long de road, I see a big
black bird er settin’ on de fence. He flop his wings, look right at me en
say, ‘Corpse! Corpse! Corpse!’”—Aleck’s voice dropped to a whisper—
“’en las’ night de Ku Kluxes come ter see me, sah!”
Stoneman lifted his beetling brows.
“That’s interesting. We are searching for information on that subject.”
“Yessah! Dey wuz Sperits, ridin’ white hosses wid flowin’ white robes,
en big blood-red eyes! De hosses wuz twenty feet high, en some er de
Sperits wuz higher dan dis cote-house! Dey wuz all bal’ headed, ’cept
right on de top whar dere wuz er straight blaze er fire shot up in de air
ten foot high!”
“What did they say to you?”
“Dey say dat ef I didn’t design de sheriff’s office, go back ter farmin’ en
behave myself, dey had er job waitin’ fer me in hell, sah. En shos’ you
born dey wuz right from dar!”
“Of course!” sneered the old Commoner.
“Yessah! Hit’s des lak I tell yer. One ob ’em makes me fetch ’im er drink
er water. I carry two bucketsful ter ’im ‘fo’ I git done, en I swar ter God
he drink it all right dar ‘fo’ my eyes! He say hit wuz pow’ful dry down
below, sah! En den I feel sumfin’ bus’ loose inside er me, en I
disremember all dat come ter pass! I made er jump fer de ribber bank, en
de next I knowed I wuz er pullin’ fur de odder sho’. I’se er pow’ful good
swimmer, sah, but I nebber git ercross er creek befo’ ez quick ez I got
ober de ribber las’ night.”
“And you think of going back to farming?”
“I done begin plowin’ dis mornin’, marster!”
“Don’t you call me marster!” yelled the old man. “Are you the sheriff of
this county?”
Aleck laughed loudly.
“Na-sah! Dat’s er joke! I ain’t nuttin’ but er plain nigger—I wants peace,
judge.”
“Evidently we need a new sheriff.”
“Dat’s what I tell ’em, sah, dis mornin’—en I des flings mysef on de
ignance er de cote!”
Phil laughed aloud, and his father’s colourless eyes began to spit cold
poison.
“About what time do you think your master, Colonel Cameron, will
honour us with his presence?” he asked Aleck.
Again the sheriff bowed.
“He’s er comin’ right now, lak I tole yer—he’s er gemman, sah.”
Ben walked briskly into the room and confronted the Commissioner.
Without apparently noticing his presence, Stoneman said:
“In the absence of witnesses we accept the discharge of this warrant,
pending developments.”
Ben turned on his heel, pressed Phil’s hand as he passed through the
crowd, and disappeared.
The old Commoner drove to the telegraph office and sent a message of
more than a thousand words to the White House, a copy of which the
operator delivered to Ben Cameron within an hour.
President Grant next morning issued a proclamation declaring the nine
Scotch-Irish hill counties of South Carolina in a state of insurrection,
ordered an army corps of five thousand men to report there for duty,
pending the further necessity of martial law and the suspension of the
writ of Habeas Corpus.
 CHAPTER VI
THE COUNTER STROKE
From the hour he had watched the capture of the armoury old Stoneman
felt in the air a current against him which was electric, as if the dead had
heard the cry of the clansmen’s greeting, risen and rallied to their pale
ranks.
The daring campaign these men were waging took his breath. They were
going not only to defeat his delegation to Congress, but send their own
to take their seats, reinforced by the enormous power of a suppressed
negro vote. The blow was so sublime in its audacity, he laughed in secret
admiration while he raved and cursed.
The army corps took possession of the hill counties, quartering from five
to six hundred regulars at each courthouse; but the mischief was done.
The State was on fire. The eighty thousand rifles with which the negroes
had been armed were now in the hands of their foes. A white rifle-club
was organized in every town, village, and hamlet. They attended the
public meetings with their guns, drilled in front of the speakers’ stands,
yelled, hooted, hissed, cursed, and jeered at the orators who dared to
champion or apologize for negro rule. At night the hoofbeat of
squadrons of pale horsemen and the crack of their revolvers struck
terror to the heart of every negro, carpet-bagger, and scallawag.
There was a momentary lull in the excitement, which Stoneman mistook
for fear, at the appearance of the troops. He had the Governor appoint a
white sheriff, a young scallawag from the mountains who was a noted
moonshiner and desperado. He arrested over a hundred leading men in
the county, charged them with complicity in the killing of the three
members of the African Guard, and instructed the judge and clerk of the
court to refuse bail and commit them to jail under military guard.
To his amazement the prisoners came into Piedmont armed and
mounted. They paid no attention to the deputy sheriffs who were
supposed to have them in charge. They deliberately formed in line
under Ben Cameron’s direction and he led them in a parade through the
streets.
The five hundred United States regulars who were camped on the river
bank were Westerners. Ben led his squadron of armed prisoners in front
of this camp and took them through the evolutions of cavalry with the
precision of veterans. The soldiers dropped their games and gathered,
laughing, to watch them. The drill ended with a double-rank charge at
the river embankment. When they drew every horse on his haunches on
the brink, firing a volley with a single crash, a wild cheer broke from the
soldiers, and the officers rushed from their tents.
Ben wheeled his men, galloped in front of the camp, drew them up at
dress parade, and saluted. A low word of command from a trooper, and
the Westerners quickly formed in ranks, returned the salute, and
cheered. The officers rushed up, cursing, and drove the men back to
their tents.
The horsemen laughed, fired a volley in the air, cheered, and galloped
back to the courthouse. The court was glad to get rid of them. There was
no question raised over technicalities in making out bail-bonds. The
clerk wrote the names of imaginary bondsmen as fast as his pen could
fly, while the perspiration stood in beads on his red forehead.
Another telegram from old Stoneman to the White House, and the Writ
of Habeas Corpus was suspended and Martial Law proclaimed.
Enraged beyond measure at the salute from the troops, he had two
companies of negro regulars sent from Columbia, and they camped in
the Courthouse Square.
He determined to make a desperate effort to crush the fierce spirit before
which his forces were being driven like chaff. He induced Bizzel to
return from Cleveland with his negro wife and children. He was
escorted to the City Hall and reinstalled as Mayor by the full force of
seven hundred troops, and a negro guard placed around his house.
Stoneman had Lynch run an excursion from the Black Belt, and brought
a thousand negroes to attend a final rally at Piedmont. He placarded the
town with posters on which were printed the Civil Rights Bill and the
proclamation of the President declaring Martial Law.
Ben watched this day dawn with nervous dread. He had passed a
sleepless night, riding in person to every Den of the Klan and issuing
positive orders that no white man should come to Piedmont.
A clash with the authority of the United States he had avoided from the
first as a matter of principle. It was essential to his success that his men
should commit no act of desperation which would imperil his plans.
Above all, he wished to avoid a clash with old Stoneman personally.
The arrival of the big excursion was the signal for a revival of negro
insolence which had been planned. The men brought from the Eastern
part of the State were selected for the purpose. They marched over the
town yelling and singing. A crowd of them, half drunk, formed
themselves three abreast and rushed the sidewalks, pushing every white
man, woman, and child into the street.
They met Phil on his way to the hotel and pushed him into the gutter.
He said nothing, crossed the street, bought a revolver, loaded it and put
it in his pocket. He was not popular with the negroes, and he had been
shot at twice on his way from the mills at night. The whole affair of this
rally, over which his father meant to preside, filled him with disgust,
and he was in an ugly mood.
Lynch’s speech was bold, bitter, and incendiary, and at its close the
drunken negro troopers from the local garrison began to slouch through
the streets, two and two, looking for trouble.
At the close of the speaking Stoneman called the officer in command of
these troops, and said:
“Major, I wish this rally to-day to be a proclamation of the supremacy of
law, and the enforcement of the equality of every man under law. Your
troops are entitled to the rights of white men. I understand the hotel
table has been free to-day to the soldiers from the camp on the river.
They are returning the courtesy extended to the criminals who drilled
before them. Send two of your black troops down for dinner and see that
it is served. I wish an example for the State.”
“It will be a dangerous performance, sir,” the major protested.
The old Commoner furrowed his brow.
“Have you been instructed to act under my orders?”
“I have, sir,” said the officer, saluting.
“Then do as I tell you,” snapped Stoneman.
Ben Cameron had kept indoors all day, and dined with fifty of the
Western troopers whom he had identified as leading in the friendly
demonstration to his men. Margaret, who had been busy with Mrs.
Cameron entertaining these soldiers, was seated in the dining-room
alone, eating her dinner, while Phil waited impatiently in the parlour.
The guests had all gone when two big negro troopers, fighting drunk,
walked into the hotel. They went to the water-cooler and drank
ostentatiously, thrusting their thick lips coated with filth far into the
cocoanut dipper, while a dirty hand grasped its surface.
They pushed the dining-room door open and suddenly flopped down
beside Margaret.
She attempted to rise, and cried in rage:
“How dare you, black brutes?”
One of them threw his arm around her chair, thrust his face into hers,
and said with a laugh:
“Don’t hurry, my beauty; stay and take dinner wid us!”
Margaret again attempted to rise, and screamed, as Phil rushed into the
room with drawn revolver. One of the negroes fired at him, missed, and
the next moment dropped dead with a bullet through his heart.
The other leaped across the table and through the open window.
Margaret turned, confronting both Phil and Ben with revolvers in their
hands, and fainted.
Ben hurried Phil out the back door and persuaded him to fly.
“Man, you must go! We must not have a riot here to-day. There’s no
telling what will happen. A disturbance now, and my men will swarm
into town to-night. For God’s sake go, until things are quiet!”
“But I tell you I’ll face it. I’m not afraid,” said Phil quietly.
“No, but I am,” urged Ben. “These two hundred negroes are armed and
drunk. Their officers may not be able to control them, and they may lay
their hands on you—go—go!—go!—you must go! The train is due in
fifteen minutes.”
He half lifted him on a horse tied behind the hotel, leaped on another,
galloped to the flag-station two miles out of town, and put him on the
north-bound train.
“Stay in Charlotte until I wire for you,” was Ben’s parting injunction.
He turned his horse’s head for McAllister’s, sent the two boys with all
speed to the Cyclops of each of the ten township Dens with positive
orders to disregard all wild rumours from Piedmont and keep every
man out of town for two days.
As he rode back he met a squad of mounted white regulars, who
arrested him. The trooper’s companion had sworn positively that he was
the man who killed the negro.
Within thirty minutes he was tried by drum-head court-martial and
sentenced to be shot.
 CHAPTER VII
THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER
Sweet was the secret joy of old Stoneman over the fate of Ben Cameron.
His death sentence would strike terror to his party, and his prompt
execution, on the morning of the election but two days off, would turn
the tide, save the State, and rescue his daughter from a hated alliance.
He determined to bar the last way of escape. He knew the Klan would
attempt a rescue, and stop at no means fair or foul short of civil war.
Afraid of the loyalty of the white battalions quartered in Piedmont, he
determined to leave immediately for Spartanburg, order an exchange of
garrisons, and, when the death warrant was returned from
headquarters, place its execution in the hands of a stranger, to whom
appeal would be vain. He knew such an officer in the Spartanburg post,
a man of fierce, vindictive nature, once court-martialed for cruelty, who
hated every Southern white man with mortal venom. He would put him
in command of the death watch.
He hired a fast team and drove across the county with all speed, doubly
anxious to get out of town before Elsie discovered the tragedy and
appealed to him for mercy. Her tears and agony would be more than he
could endure. She would stay indoors on account of the crowds, and he
would not be missed until evening, when safely beyond her reach.
When Phil arrived at Charlotte he found an immense crowd at the
bulletin board in front of the Observer office reading the account of the
Piedmont tragedy. To his horror he learned of the arrest, trial, and
sentence of Ben for the deed which he had done.
He rushed to the office of the Division Superintendent of the Piedmont
Air Line Railroad, revealed his identity, told him the true story of the
tragedy, and begged for a special to carry him back. The Superintendent,
who was a clansman, not only agreed, but within an hour had the
special ready and two cars filled with stern-looking men to accompany
him. Phil asked no questions. He knew what it meant. The train stopped
at Gastonia and King’s Mountain and took on a hundred more men.
The special pulled into Piedmont at dusk. Phil ran to the Commandant
and asked for an interview with Ben alone.
“For what purpose, sir?” the officer asked.
Phil resorted to a ruse, knowing the Commandant to be unaware of any
difference of opinion between him and his father.
“I hold a commission to obtain a confession from the prisoner which
may save his life by destroying the Ku Klux Klan.”
He was admitted at once and the guard ordered to withdraw until the
interview ended.
Phil took Ben Cameron’s place, exchanging hat and coat, and wrote a
note to his father, telling in detail the truth, and asked for his immediate
interference.
“Deliver that, and I’ll be out of here in two hours,” he said, as he placed
the note in Ben’s hand.
“I’ll go straight to the house,” was the quick reply.
The exchange of the Southerner’s slouch hat and Prince Albert for Phil’s
derby and short coat completely fooled the guard in the dim light. The
men were as much alike as twins except the shade of difference in the
colour of their hair. He passed the sentinel without a challenge, and
walked rapidly toward Stoneman’s house.
On the way he was astonished to meet five hundred soldiers just arrived
on a special from Spartanburg. Amazed at the unexpected movement,
he turned and followed them back to the jail.
They halted in front of the building he had just vacated, and their
commander handed an official document to the officer in charge. The
guard was changed and a cordon of soldiers encircled the prison.
The Piedmont garrison had received notice by wire to move to
Spartanburg, and Ben heard the beat of their drums already marching to
board the special.
He pressed forward and asked an interview with the Captain in
command.
The answer came with a brutal oath:
“I have been warned against all the tricks and lies this town can hatch.
The commander of the death watch will permit no interview, receive no
visitors, hear no appeal, and allow no communication with the prisoner
until after the execution. You can announce this to whom it may
concern.”
“But you’ve got the wrong man. You have no right to execute him,” said
Ben excitedly.
“I’ll risk it,” he answered, with a sneer.
“Great God!” Ben cried beneath his breath. “The old fool has entrapped
his son in the net he spread for me!”
 CHAPTER VIII
A RIDE FOR A LIFE
When Ben Cameron failed to find either Elsie or her father at home, he
hurried to the hotel, walking under the shadows of the trees to avoid
recognition, though his resemblance to Phil would have enabled him to
pass in his hat and coat unchallenged by any save the keenest observers.
He found his mother’s bedroom door ajar and saw Elsie within, sobbing
in her arms. He paused, watched, and listened.
Never had he seen his mother so beautiful—her face calm, intelligent,
and vital, crowned with a halo of gray. She stood, flushed and dignified,
softly smoothing the golden hair of the sobbing girl whom she had
learned to love as her daughter. Her whole being reflected the years of
homage she had inspired in husband, children, and neighbours. What a
woman! She had made war inevitable, fought it to the bitter end; and in
the despair of a negro reign of terror, still the prophetess and high
priestess of a people, serene, undismayed, and defiant, she had fitted the
uniform of a Grand Dragon on her last son, and sewed in secret day and
night to equip his men. And through it all she was without affectation,
her sweet motherly ways, gentle manner and bearing always resistless
to those who came within her influence.
“If he dies,” cried the tearful voice, “I shall never forgive myself for not
surrendering without reserve and fighting his battles with him!”
“He is not dead yet,” was the mother’s firm answer. “Doctor Cameron is
on Queen’s back. Your lover’s men will be riding to-night—these young
dare-devil Knights of the South, with their life in their hands, a song on
their lips, and the scorn of death in their souls!”
“Then I’ll ride with them,” cried the girl, suddenly lifting her head.
Ben stepped into the room, and with a cry of joy Elsie sprang into his
arms. The mother stood silent until their lips met in the long tender kiss
of the last surrender of perfect love.
“How did you escape so soon?” she asked quietly, while Elsie’s head
still lay on his breast.
“Phil shot the brute, and I rushed him out of town. He heard the news,
returned on the special, took my place, and sent me for his father. The
guard has been changed and it’s impossible to see him, or communicate
with the new Commandant——”
Elsie started and turned pale.
“And father has hidden to avoid me—merciful God—if Phil is
executed——”
“He isn’t dead yet, either,” said Ben, slipping his arm around her. “But
we must save him without a clash or a drop of bloodshed, if possible.
The fate of our people may hang on this. A battle with United States
troops now might mean ruin for the South——”
“But you will save him?” Elsie pleaded, looking into his face.
“Yes—or I’ll go down with him,” was the steady answer.
“Where is Margaret?” he asked.
“Gone to McAllister’s with a message from your father,” Mrs. Cameron
replied,
“Tell her when she returns to keep a steady nerve. I’ll save Phil. Send
her to find her father. Tell him to hold five hundred men ready for
action in the woods by the river and the rest in reserve two miles out of
town——”
“May I go with her?” Elsie asked eagerly.
“No. I may need you,” he said. “I am going to find the old statesman
now, if I have to drag the bottomless pit. Wait here until I return.”
Ben reached the telegraph office unobserved, called the operator at
Columbia, and got the Grand Giant of the county into the office. Within
an hour he learned that the death warrant had been received and
approved. It would be returned by a messenger to Piedmont on the
morning train. He learned also that any appeal for a stay must be made
through the Honourable Austin Stoneman, the secret representative of
the Government clothed with this special power. The execution had
been ordered the day of the election, to prevent the concentration of any
large force bent on rescue.
“The old fox!” Ben muttered.
From the Grand Giant at Spartanburg he learned, after a delay of three
hours, that Stoneman had left with a boy in a buggy, which he had hired
for three days, and refused to tell his destination. He promised to follow
and locate him as quickly as possible.
It was the afternoon on the day following, during the progress of the
election, before Ben received the message from Spartanburg that
Stoneman had been found at the Old Red Tavern where the roads
crossed from Piedmont to Hambright. It was only twelve miles away,
just over the line on the North Carolina side.
He walked with Margaret to the block where Queen stood saddled,
watching with pride the quiet air of self-control with which she bore
herself.
“Now, my sister, you know the way to the tavern. Ride for your
sweetheart’s life. Bring the old man here by five o’clock, and we’ll save
Phil without a fight. Keep your nerve. The Commandant knows a
regiment of mine is lying in the woods, and he’s trying to slip out of
town with his prisoner. I’ll stand by my men ready for a battle at a
moment’s notice, but for God’s sake get here in time to prevent it.”
She stooped from the saddle, pressed her brother’s hand, kissed him,
and galloped swiftly over the old Way of Romance she knew so well.
On reaching the tavern, the landlord rudely denied that any such man
was there, and left her standing dazed and struggling to keep back the
tears.
A boy of eight, with big wide friendly eyes, slipped into the room,
looked up into her face tenderly, and said:
“He’s the biggest liar in North Carolina. The old man’s right upstairs in
the room over your head. Come on; I’ll show you.”
Margaret snatched the child in her arms and kissed him.
She knocked in vain for ten minutes. At last she heard his voice within:
“Go away from that door!”
“I’m from Piedmont, sir,” cried Margaret, “with an important message
from the Commandant for you.”
“Yes; I saw you come. I will not see you. I know everything, and I will
hear no appeal.”
“But you cannot know of the exchange of men,” pleaded the girl.
“I tell you I know all about it. I will not interfere——”
“But you could not be so cruel——”
“The majesty of the law must be vindicated. The judge who consents to
the execution of a murderer is not cruel. He is showing mercy to Society.
Go, now; I will not hear you.”
In vain Margaret knocked, begged, pleaded, and sobbed.
At last, in a fit of desperation, as she saw the sun sinking lower and the
precious minutes flying, she hurled her magnificent figure against the
door and smashed the cheap lock which held it.
The old man sat at the other side of the room, looking out of the
window, with his massive jaws locked in rage. The girl staggered to his
side, knelt by his chair, placed her trembling hand on his arm, and
begged:
“For the love of Jesus, have mercy! Come with me quickly!”
With a growl of anger, he said:
“No!”
“It was a mad impulse, in my defence as well as his own.”
“Impulse, yes! But back of it lay banked the fires of cruelty and race
hatred! The Nation cannot live with such barbarism rotting its heart
out.”
“But this is war, sir—a war of races, and this an accident of war—
besides, his life had been attempted by them twice before.”
“So I’ve heard, and yet the negro always happens to be the victim——”
Margaret leaped to her feet and glared at the old man for a moment in
uncontrollable anger.
“Are you a fiend?” she fairly shrieked.
Old Stoneman merely pursed his lips.
The girl came a step closer, and extended her hand again in mute
appeal.
“No, I was foolish. You are not cruel. I have heard of a hundred acts of
charity you have done among our poor. Come, this is horrible! It is
impossible! You cannot consent to the death of your son——”
Stoneman looked up sharply:
“Thank God, he hasn’t married my daughter yet——”
“Your daughter!” gasped Margaret. “I’ve told you it was Phil who killed
the negro! He took Ben’s place just before the guards were exchanged—
—”
“Phil!—Phil?” shrieked the old man, staggering to his club foot and
stumbling toward Margaret with dilated eyes and whitening face; “My
boy—Phil?—why—why, are you crazy?—Phil? Did you say—Phil?”
“Yes. Ben persuaded him to go to Charlotte until the excitement passed
to avoid trouble. Come, come, sir, we must be quick! We may be too
late!”
She seized and pulled him toward the door.
“Yes. Yes, we must hurry,” he said in a laboured whisper, looking
around dazed. “You will show me the way, my child—you love him—
yes, we will go quickly—quickly! my boy—my boy!”
Margaret called the landlord, and while they hitched Queen to the
buggy, the old man stood helplessly wringing and fumbling his big ugly
hands, muttering incoherently, and tugging at his collar as though about
to suffocate.
As they dashed away, old Stoneman laid a trembling hand on
Margaret’s arm.
“Your horse is a good one, my child?”
“Yes; the one Marion saved—the finest in the county.”
“And you know the way?”
“Every foot of it. Phil and I have driven it often.”
“Yes, yes—you love him,” he sighed, pressing her hand.
Through the long reckless drive, as the mare flew over the rough hills,
every nerve and muscle of her fine body at its utmost tension, the father
sat silent. He braced his club foot against the iron bar of the dashboard
and gripped the sides of the buggy to steady his feeble body. Margaret
leaned forward intently watching the road to avoid an accident. The old
man’s strange colourless eyes stared straight in front, wide open, and
seeing nothing, as if the soul had already fled through them into
eternity.
 CHAPTER IX
“VENGEANCE IS MINE”
It was dark long before Margaret and Stoneman reached Piedmont. A
mile out of town a horse neighed in the woods, and, tired as she was,
Queen threw her head high and answered the call.
The old man did not notice it, but Margaret knew a squadron of white-
and-scarlet horsemen stood in those woods, and her heart gave a bound
of joy.
As they passed the Presbyterian church, she saw through the open
window her father standing at his Elder’s seat leading in prayer. They
were holding a watch service, asking God for victory in the eventful
struggle of the day.
Margaret attempted to drive straight to the jail, and a sentinel stopped
them.
“I am Stoneman, sir—the real commander of these troops,” said the old
man, with authority.
“Orders is orders, and I don’t take ’em from you,” was the answer.
“Then tell your commander that Mr. Stoneman has just arrived from
Spartanburg and asks to see him at the hotel immediately.”
He hobbled into the parlour and waited in agony while Margaret tied
the mare. Ben, her mother and father, and every servant were gone.
In a few moments the second officer hurried to Stoneman, saluted, and
said:
“We’ve pulled it off in good shape, sir. They’ve tried to fool us with a
dozen tricks, and a whole regiment has been lying in wait for us all day.
But at dark the Captain outwitted them, took his prisoner with a squad
of picked cavalry, and escaped their pickets. They’ve been gone an hour,
and ought to be back with the body——”
Old Stoneman sprang on him with the sudden fury of a madman,
clutching at his throat.
“If you’ve killed my son,” he gasped—“go—go! Follow them with a
swift messenger and stop them! It’s a mistake—you’re killing the wrong
man—you’re killing my boy—quick—my God, quick—don’t stand there
staring at me!”
The officer rushed to obey his order as Margaret entered.
The old man seized her arm, and said with laboured breath:
“Your father, my child, ask him to come to me quickly.”
Margaret hurried to the church, and an usher called the doctor to the
door.
He read the question trembling on the girl’s lips.
“Nothing has happened yet, my daughter. Your brother has held a
regiment of his men in readiness every moment of the day.”
“Mr. Stoneman is at the hotel and asks to see you immediately,” she
whispered.
“God grant he may prevent bloodshed,” said the father. “Go inside and
stay with your mother.”
When Doctor Cameron entered the parlour Stoneman hobbled painfully
to meet him, his face ashen, and his breath rattling in his throat as if his
soul were being strangled.
“You are my enemy, Doctor,” he said, taking his hand, “but you are a
pious man. I have been called an infidel—I am only a wilful sinner—I
have slain my own son, unless God Almighty, who can raise the dead,
shall save him! You are the man at whom I aimed the blow that has
fallen on my head. I wish to confess to you and set myself right before
God. He may hear my cry, and have mercy on me.”
He gasped for breath, sank into his seat, looked around, and said:
“Will you close the door?”
The doctor complied with his request and returned.
“We all wear masks, Doctor,” began the trembling voice. “Beneath lie
the secrets of love and hate from which actions move. My will alone
forged the chains of negro rule. Three forces moved me—party success,
a vicious woman, and the quenchless desire for personal vengeance.
When I first fell a victim to the wiles of the yellow vampire who kept my
house, I dreamed of lifting her to my level. And when I felt myself
sinking into the black abyss of animalism, I, whose soul had learned the
pathway of the stars and held high converse with the great spirits of the
ages——”
He paused, looked up in terror, and whispered:
“What’s that noise? Isn’t it the distant beat of horses’ hoofs?”
“No,” said the doctor, listening; “it’s the roar of the falls we hear, from a
sudden change of the wind.”
“I’m done now,” Stoneman went on, slowly fumbling his hands. “My
life has been a failure. The dice of God are always loaded.”
His great head drooped lower, and he continued:
“Mightiest of all was my motive of revenge. Fierce business and political
feuds wrecked my iron mills. I shouldered their vast debts, and paid the
last mortgage of a hundred thousand dollars the week before Lee
invaded my State. I stood on the hill in the darkness, cried, raved,
cursed, while I watched the troops lay those mills in ashes. Then and
there I swore that I’d live until I ground the South beneath my heel!
When I got back to my house they had buried a Confederate soldier in
the field. I dug his body up, carted it to the woods, and threw it into a
ditch——”
The hand of the white-haired Southerner suddenly gripped old
Stoneman’s throat—and then relaxed. His head sank on his breast, and
he cried in anguish:
“God be merciful to me a sinner! Would I, too, seek revenge!”
Stoneman looked at the doctor, dazed by his sudden onslaught and
collapse.
“Yes, he was somebody’s boy down here,” he went on, “who was loved
perhaps even as I love—I don’t blame you. See, in the inside pocket next
to my heart I carry the pictures of Phil and Elsie taken from babyhood
up, all set in a little book. They don’t know this—nor does the world
dream I’ve been so soft-hearted——”
He drew a miniature album from his pocket and fumbled it aimlessly:
“You know Phil was my first-born——”
His voice broke, and he looked at the doctor helplessly.
The Southerner slipped his arm around the old man’s shoulders and
began a tender and reverent prayer.
The sudden thunder of a squad of cavalry with clanking sabres swept by
the hotel toward the jail.
Stoneman scrambled to his feet, staggered, and caught a chair.
“It’s no use,” he groaned, “—they’ve come with his body—I’m slipping
down—the lights are going out—I haven’t a friend! It’s dark and cold—
I’m alone, and lost—God—has—hidden—His—face—from—me!”
Voices were heard without, and the tramp of heavy feet on the steps.
Stoneman clutched the doctor’s arm in agony:
“Stop them!—Stop them! Don’t let them bring him in here!”
He sank limp into the chair and stared at the door as it swung open and
Phil walked in, with Ben and Elsie by his side, in full clansman disguise.
The old man leaped to his feet and gasped:
“The Klan!—The Klan! No? Yes! It’s true—glory to God, they’ve saved
my boy—Phil—Phil!”
“How did you rescue him?” Doctor Cameron asked Ben.
“Had a squadron lying in wait on every road that led from town. The
Captain thought a thousand men were on him, and surrendered without
a shot.”
At twelve o’clock Ben stood at the gate with Elsie.
“Your fate hangs in the balance of this election to-night,” she said. “I’ll
share it with you, success or failure, life or death.”
“Success, not failure,” he answered firmly. “The Grand Dragons of six
States have already wired victory. Look at our lights on the mountains!
They are ablaze—range on range our signals gleam until the Fiery Cross
is lost among the stars!”
“What does it mean?” she whispered.
“That I am a successful revolutionist—that Civilization has been saved,
and the South redeemed from shame.”
THE END