Download the Full Ebook and Access More Features - ebooknice.

com

(Ebook) Introductory Chemistry: An Atoms First

Approach by Julia Burdge, Michelle Driessen ISBN
9781260565867, 1260565866

https://ebooknice.com/product/introductory-chemistry-an-
atoms-first-approach-11864232

OR CLICK HERE

DOWLOAD EBOOK

Download more ebook instantly today at https://ebooknice.com

 Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) ready for you
Download now and discover formats that fit your needs...

Start reading on any device today!

(Ebook) Introductory Chemistry: An Atoms First Approach, 3rd Edition by Julia Burdge
& Michelle Driessen ISBN 9781266137075, 1266137076

https://ebooknice.com/product/introductory-chemistry-an-atoms-first-
approach-3rd-edition-58793938

ebooknice.com

(Ebook) Introductory chemistry : an atoms first approach by Julia Burdge; Michelle

Driessen ISBN 9780073402703, 9781259253362, 0073402702, 1259253368

https://ebooknice.com/product/introductory-chemistry-an-atoms-first-
approach-11079178

ebooknice.com

(Ebook) Chemistry: Atoms First ISE by Julia Burdge, Jason Overby ISBN 9781266136788,
1266136789

https://ebooknice.com/product/chemistry-atoms-first-ise-51390648

ebooknice.com

(Ebook) Biota Grow 2C gather 2C cook by Loucas, Jason; Viles, James ISBN
9781459699816, 9781743365571, 9781925268492, 1459699815, 1743365578, 1925268497

https://ebooknice.com/product/biota-grow-2c-gather-2c-cook-6661374

ebooknice.com
(Ebook) Chemistry: An Atoms First Approach by Steven S. Zumdahl, Susan A. Zumdahl
ISBN 9781305079243, 1305079248

https://ebooknice.com/product/chemistry-an-atoms-first-approach-5147742

ebooknice.com

(Ebook) Chemistry by Julia R. Burdge ISBN 9780073025544, 0073025542

https://ebooknice.com/product/chemistry-2470356

ebooknice.com

(Ebook) Chemistry, 6th Edition by Julia Burdge ISBN 9781265122447, 126512244X

https://ebooknice.com/product/chemistry-6th-edition-51676000

ebooknice.com

(Ebook) Chemistry : An Atoms-Focused Approach, Third Edition by Thomas R. Gilbert

ISBN 9780393674026, 0393674029

https://ebooknice.com/product/chemistry-an-atoms-focused-approach-third-
edition-38204858

ebooknice.com

(Ebook) Matematik 5000+ Kurs 2c Lärobok by Lena Alfredsson, Hans Heikne, Sanna
Bodemyr ISBN 9789127456600, 9127456609

https://ebooknice.com/product/matematik-5000-kurs-2c-larobok-23848312

ebooknice.com
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
their arms, in deadly combat with the same men now being allowed
to deny the Negroes all that freedom implied and all that made the
war worthy of being fought!
Perhaps the hand of God had less to do with the non-interference
of the government in the rioting than the influence set at work by the
misrule of those in power of the State government. Every intelligent
soldier knew of the chaotic condition of the country as a result of the
open handed robbery and connivance with crime on the part of the
State officials and decided possibly that the reign of lawlessness
prevailing was no worse than the infamous conduct of the
government under the constituted authorities. At any rate, the “Red
Shirts” were allowed a wide latitude in defiance of all authority, and
Mart Gary’s and Butler’s doctrine of spreading terror among the
Negroes as the only means of rescuing the State from the misrule
prevailing triumphed famously.
Preceding the arrival of the national military authorities, travel and
the peaceable pursuit of business was made as hazardous by the
inefficiency and corruption of the constituted authorities as it had
been made by the creation of the reign of terror by the “Red Shirts.”
Radical officials, instead of the Negro, should be held accountable
for many of the real grievances complained of by the white people. In
the hope of winning his vote the Negro was promised by most of
these time-servers and self-seekers almost everything under the sun
which he could desire, including not only the proverbial forty acres
and a mule but absolute protection in attempts at inter-marriage with
the whites. He was urged not only to assert his rights but to defend
them even if it became necessary to shoot to death whole
communities of white people in doing so. With this instruction and
the additional assurance that the government at Washington would
protect them in every thing they might do, is it any wonder that the
conduct of these simple, trusting, unsuspicious children of ignorance,
ready to believe any thing told them and as ready to act on false
assumptions as on the other sort, should have become very
obnoxious to their former masters, and especially to that class
known as the “Poor Buckra?”
 Therefore, the work Miss Schofield undertook to do and
accomplished in spite of all opposition, that of educating the ignorant
Negro and empowering him with the sword of reason, in order that
he might not be led unwisely by those who sought to use him and did
use him for selfish purposes, was the great need of the times.
A former member of one of the many “Red Shirt” bands who
participated in the outrages of the Ellenton and Hamburg riots and is
at this time (1916) an inmate of the home for Confederate soldiers at
Columbia, S. C., stated to the author that it was the firmness, the
reasonableness and plausibility of the arguments of Martha
Schofield that influenced him and his compatriots in crime from
molesting the Schofield school. He states that he and his friends
once made designs looking to the destruction of the school as a part
of the plan in terrorizing the Negroes and “scallawags,” but were
prevented from doing so only by the patriotism expressed by this
little woman in a casual, brief conversation, at a time when she least
expected their design against her. “We all felt, also,” added the old
rebel, “that since we could not possibly kill all the Negroes some of
them would be forced to live amongst us always, and since the more
useful arts, such as farming, house-keeping, sewing and cooking
which we satisfied ourselves were specialized in by Miss Schofield,
were better done right than wrong her work might be helpful to us,
and so we agree to let her alone.”
The great mission of her work was to teach the Negro the
necessity of preparing himself for the duties devolving upon him after
freedom and to place in his hands the knowledge with which he
would be better able to discharge these duties. This took him first
through an elementary course in physiology and hygiene, as the first
duty of man as Miss Schofield understood it, was to make of himself
a good animal. The author, by reason of her position in the medical
profession and on account of her attendance at the Schofield school
is in a position to know that the principles of hygiene and sanitation
as taught and practiced by Martha Schofield thirty years ago among
the Negroes were far in advance of that time, so far in advance that
at this day and time we see the same identical principles in use
among us, improved upon but slightly, if any.
 The fact that Miss Schofield had the intelligence and genius to
begin her work where it should have been begun, in the home,
appealed to the good common sense of her white neighbors who for
economic reasons, if not for nobler motives, desired improved living
conditions to obtain among the Negroes. In the moral and intellectual
aspect of the lives of the latter the white man took little or no interest,
except to disparage the work done in this direction; but morality and
intelligence are bred on physical prosperity. Instruction in the art of
farming and in the laws of sanitation and health served to free many
who came under the influence of the school early in life from the
shackles and bonds of a form of slavery woven in the factory of
ignorance. Immorality, superstition, disease and death are some of
the products of this factory. Great joy is taken in the fact that not one
of the graduates of Miss Schofield’s school has ever been convicted
or sentenced to penal servitude. This demonstrates the wisdom of
education as a means of stamping out crime.
Robbery and murder by the Negroes in the new situation which
freedom had placed him was very uncommon, but he did practice a
form of conduct more humiliating to the whites than that of stealing
their trashy purses or taking their lives, which with the loss of their
slaves and their old aristocratic prestige, they considered worse than
blasted. He “mustered” into the service of the army, aspired to official
recognition and even cast votes and that at a time when his old
master was disfranchised! Why, he even arose to the position of
Sheriff and Attorney-General, Legislator and city Marshall. And in the
execution of the duties of his high office he often had occasion to
arrest some of his old masters or their best friends, and this aroused
far more anger among the whites than any of his lesser crimes, such
as assassination, robbery and the like. The white man resolved
about like this: “The Negro who steals my life and purse stealeth
trash but he who steals my high-blown greatness, takes that which
shall not elevate him but make him lie low, indeed, beneath six foot
of earth and clay.”
For want of a cool, calm and deliberate judgment which education
is supposed to give to man, regulating his action to suit occasions
and emergencies, the Negro in office, erred egregiously in his
dealings with the whites, as white men and the men of all races
before being made efficient by the refining influences of
enlightenment, will err and do err. As a legislator he enacted some
very foolish and unnecessary legislation, impracticable if not
discriminatory.
Among the ordinances of the town of Hamburg, which was ruled
entirely by Negroes, was one designed for the purpose of entrapping
the white men into the meshes of the law, although it was ostensibly
passed in the interest of the public health. It forbade any one to drink
at a public spring within the limits of the town except from some
vessel such as a gourd, cup or dipper, and was rigidly enforced by
the town marshall who was always a Negro. As many of the whites
who passed by it had no dipper or cup and were not disposed to use
the one at the spring for the public use as the Negroes enjoyed the
same privilege as they in its use, this ordinance caused the death of
one of the marshalls of the town and may have produced many riots
if the Negro authorities had resented extensively the defiance of this
law which the whites took particular pains to glaringly flaunt in their
faces.
On one occasion a white man was arrested and taken before
“General” Prince Rivers and fined five dollars for drinking from the
spring without a cup. Sometime after this incident a Mr. Cockrell in
attempting to drink from it in a similar way was arrested by the Negro
marshall who it is charged, used insolent and abusive language.
Cockrell resented it by stabbing the officer to death with a knife. He
escaped capture and trial for murder only by getting out of the town
in a coffin-box which a friendly merchant arranged for his
convenience. No one knew till years afterwards who it was that killed
the vigilant of the town’s peace, but everybody felt that this act also
killed the enforcement of the “Spout” spring ordinance even as dead
as the town’s dead marshall.
Miss Schofield’s teaching included helpful instructions in the
matter of the responsibility of those entrusted with the exercise of
power and had for its object the work of storing the minds of the
Negroes with correct and practical principles of government, such as
would promote peace and contribute to the happiness and progress
of both races alike. With equal force she applied herself strenuously
to the task of impressing every Negro official that she could possibly
reach with the fact that the dignity of their office required an
unostentatious exercise of authority rather than a lavish display of
power, which, unfortunately for the Negro, seemed to characterize
his first attempt to rule. She taught that good government rested
upon the exercise of intelligent judgment and was made strong or
weak in proportion to the intelligence of those delegated to perform
its functions, supposing, of course, that intelligence also qualifies an
individual (as it most certainly does if it is heart deep), in moral
fitness for the duties and honors of office.
No one can know her life and work as the author knows about
them without acknowledging that want of her divine messages is, at
bottom the sole cause of much of our present woe, as want of them
were the cause in 1860 and 1870 and 1880 of our suffering and
misery then.
In the light of this fact, with all of us, white and black alike,
becoming more and more inclined to accept it as a fact, it is scarcely
possible that any attempt sufficiently strong to retard the educational
advancement of the Negro to any great extent, will ever be made
again.
Martha Schofield’s pupils and graduates are now scattered all over
this broad land, the majority of them engaged in farming, and are
making a success; but a vast number are architects, house-builders,
while not a few are successfully employed in the manufacture of
useful articles of all kinds. Among the best teachers of the colored
race are numbered some of her students, while the law and medical
professions each have a few to their credit.
But the influence of her teaching in the preparation of colored men
and women for the practice of humanitarian and religious principles,
the forces behind all endeavor that can be depended upon to make
the world a better place in which to live, is the greater legacy of her
life to the South, the white as well as the colored people.
If the white men of 1876 had had the regard for the doctrine of the
brotherhood of man with which Miss Schofield’s instruction
abounded, the brutalities and barbarities of those horrible times
would have been impossible. Intellectual and moral advancement of
both the colored and white race is necessary, absolutely, to a higher
conception and a greater appreciation of this doctrine which carries
with it the conviction that all the world is one country and no religion
is worthy which does not compel us to do good wherever and
whenever good may be done.
Miss Schofield never seemed to question whether a solicitor of
alms was worthy or not but devoted her time and energy to the
immediate relief of the need. That the applicant was in need and
whether it was within her reach to assist him or her, black or white,
was all that appeared to concern her.
It was out of the spirit of such sainted souls that the reaction in the
North against the continuance of the profligate conditions in the
South arose, and out of the wisdom of men and women of the North
and South of her calibre and justness, that remedies for the healing
of the wounds were found. But not without leaving scars, however,
as a huge reminder that like conditions in the future will produce like
disaster.
The estimated killed among the colored in the Hamburg and
Ellenton riots is between 150 and 200. The number of whites killed is
less than twenty.
But for the change in the attitude of the United States troops
towards the whites, whom they informed that rioting must terminate,
after the Ellenton riot had then been in progress for more than a
week, the number of killed and wounded might have run into
thousands instead of only hundreds.
So the stationing of soldiers in South Carolina was at last justified
even though they stained, if not disgraced, for all time the uniform
they wore. Their failure to prevent rioting, accompanied as it was by
a large number of infinite outrages, may be forgiven but never
forgotten by memory.
Although two thousand or more white men participated in these
riots only about eight hundred were ever arrested. A charge of
murder or conspiracy to commit murder was made against each one,
but only a few were tried and none punished.
The reason of the failure of the government to press the charges
and convict the guilty was not for want of evidence nor from any fear
of another conflict of like character but on account of the election of
General Wade Hampton to the governorship, in whose courage and
justice the United States Government had perfect confidence.
Besides, the most intelligent Negroes as well as the whole radical
regime of the South plead for moderation in dealing with these
cases. The radicals utilized the Federal indictments against the “Red
Shirts” as a scare-crow to intimidate them in the prosecution of
themselves in the State courts which followed the inauguration of
Hampton. The Democrats in Congress who were bitterly contesting,
at the time the election of Hayes, a Republican, to the presidency
over Tilden, also lent their powerful influence to the motion to nol
pros the cases against the whites by agreeing not to press the cases
at home against the former rulers of the South. It was also stipulated
that the Democrats must accept the choice of Hayes for president if
the Republicans succeeded in having the troops from South Carolina
and Louisiana removed.
These were the conditions upon which a treaty of peace was
entered into by the Republicans and Democrats at the time of the
election of President Hayes, but since that time laws have been
passed in many of the States making it a felony for citizens to utter
such agreements, and, of course, would apply for more severely in
the case of officials whose sworn duty it is to prosecute those guilty
of crime.
 CHAPTER X.
Crime Breeds Criminals.

After the withdrawal of troops from the South, crime of every sort
went regularly on much as usual, though not on nearly so large a
scale as before. Negro men and women, as well as those of the
whites who had sympathized with the radical regime, were whipped
and even murdered on the flimsiest and slightest pretext and in the
most wanton manner. Robbery was of such frequent occurrence as
to occasion surprise only when it did not happen. Negroes became
good Democrats or submitted to unmerciful whippings. This soon
reduced the number of objectionable voters to such a negligent
quantity as they all got lost in a well-hidden minority. Everybody who
was not a Democrat was worse than an infidel. A Republican stood
no more chance of success in a contest for political preference than
a snow ball in the infernal regions. Social ostracism was handed out
to him to the extent of ignoring him altogether, visiting his home in
case of the direst necessity and then long enough only to attend to
the matter in hand in the shortest time possible. His little children
were not infrequently whipped by other children on account of their
father being a Republican.
This was the spirit existing between a South Carolina Democrat
and Republican only a few years ago, but today the two meet on
terms of perfect equality, provided, of course, that each are white;
and discuss the politics of the country without a quarrel or even
exciting much attention. The Democrat is perfectly willing to let the
Republican run the government at Washington as long as the
Republican remains indifferent to the rule of the Democrat in the
government of the State. The one bribes the other and each cheats
the Negro. The latter’s vote, under the disfranchisement laws
enacted by the Democrats, is so negligible as to draw the contempt
of the majority party and obtain a few false promises only from the
party of the minority.
But in spite of the handicap of continued injustice and persecution,
in the face of opposition when the race was weaker and not so
capable of bearing its burdens as now, the Negro race through the
assimilation of knowledge is evolving at a rapid rate. Miss Schofield’s
work is bearing fruit, enriched by the multiplication of schools all over
the South. The habit of whipping and murdering Negroes is growing
less and less frequent and becoming in most of the Southern States,
quite a serious offense. Recent acts of some of the legislatures of
States make a county in which a person is lynched responsible to
the family sustaining the loss, and suit to recover the sum of
$2,000.00 as an indemnity is authorized. Improvement in the moral
standard of the whites is making for improvement in the moral
standard of the Negro. As the condition of one race improves the
other improves. The two will continue to go up or down together.
The lesson that crime breeds criminals, taught by the brutalities of
the “Red Shirts,” will never be forgotten by the white people of the
South. When these people tired of robbing and assassinating
Negroes, many of them turned on their own kind and not a few but
suffered much. A man named Taylor for no other grievance than that
he accepted the office of Sheriff under Chamberlain, a Republican
governor, was shot down in his own home under the very eyes and
nose of his wife. Conviction of the criminal was, of course,
impossible as there were numbers and numbers of men bound
together by oaths and other ties of secret invention ready at call to
perjure themselves in any event affecting a member of their clan,
while at that time a wife could testify neither for nor against her
husband. The criminality of the times had made criminals of men
formerly of gentlemanly traits, and splendid character, while those of
an immoral nature from inheritance were rendered desperately and
hopelessly criminal.
Than “Uncle” Alex Bettis, there was never a better Negro in all the
world. It is said of him that he could really do no wrong wilfully, that
all his errors were to be charged to the ignorance of his poor brain
rather than to any sinister motive of his pure heart; yet
notwithstanding his reputation as a faithful friend to the white man, to
all men of all races, the type of criminal produced by the criminality
of the times was so depraved that it sought the life of Bettis,
justifying their actions by asserting that his work as a minister and an
advocate of education for the colored race was inimical to the best
interests of the people, white and black alike.
Although almost illiterate, “Uncle Alex” was truly a power behind
the throne of grace on earth, for them behind that throne, when he
directed the machinery connected with it, all imaginary blessings on
earth and in Heaven flowed, even to over-flowing in the hearts of the
Negroes. It is admitted now, and should have been acknowledged at
the time of his great ministry that Mr. Bettis’ assurances of salvation
to the Negro for a righteous life and eternal damnation for a wicked
life well served to cause thousands of his followers to abandon their
ways of sin and lead lives of self-sacrifice and Christian effort, as
Jesus would have all peoples to live and act.
Perhaps his preaching was not considered objectionable and had
he confined himself solely to that alone, would not have been
disturbed; but he had become imbued with the redeeming influence
of education through contact with the Schofield school at Aiken and
early in his work began the agitation for a Negro school, where,
along with elementary literary courses, should be taught the
industrial arts as Miss Schofield was doing. This aroused the highly
criminal element of the whites, who wanted some pretext to further
persecute the Negroes, and so it was ordered at one of their
meetings that Bettis should be put to death. The day, date and place
for his execution had been fixed, but on account of an accident or
some illness to his horse, a large iron-gray, known to the whole
country-side, the minister passed the band of murderers bent on his
assassination, astride another horse, in disguise. The leader of the
mob inquired of the rider if he knew of the whereabouts of Bettis. He
replied that “preacher Bettis wus jes’ a little way up de road at Simon
Kenny’s ho’se, and wus ’er comin’ er long terrectly.”
The mob waited all the afternoon and throughout the night for
Bettis but he never came. So early the next morning they called in
person at the Bettis’ home. He received them with great kindness,
and although he knew the object of their visit, showed no excitement
whatever.
When informed that his death had been decided on, and that he
had but little time in which to live, Bettis displayed a calmness and
self-control that would have stripped Zeno of his honors at the shrine
of stoicism.
“Well, ef dat be de way der gud Lawd hab fer me ter go” said
Bettis, “I’s re’dy, but yo’ genermen luk lak yer is pow’rful hungry, an’
befo’ yer tends ter de bisness at han’ pleas let mer ole lady fix yer a
bit’ ter ete.”
As something to eat in those days was very welcome and there
was unusual hunger among the party, the consent of the mob to
have Mrs. Bettis prepare the meal was readily obtained. During the
interval between its preparation and consumption Bettis entertained
his guests with talks relating to his crops, the condition of crops
generally throughout his circuit of churches and kept repeating at the
end of each subject: “But laws er mercy, youn’ marsters, its a heap
wusser fer de po’ nigger dan it wus befo’ de wah. Now, he’s got
nuttin but freedum, whiles fo’ freedum he hab all he wants ter ete an’
mo’ ter boot, an’ hab close to ware and ebbryting ter kep hissef
wa’m.”
If these bad men were not wholly disarmed by the simple, rustic
beauty of the Negro’s unaffected discourse in the presence of death,
during the whole of which not once did he evince any sign that a
single thought of his sad fate had ever passed through his troubled
brain, they were certainly deeply affected by it, as well as by that act
of his in desiring to feed them, they who had come, not to feed him
but to make food of him for the worms of old graves in the silent
woods of sighing forest trees!
When the hungry had been fed and all had returned to the sitting
room of the humble Negro home, Mr. Bettis said, “Well, youn’
marsters, I g’ess yo’ is ’er wantin’ ter go, and so I’se not er goin’ ter
dela’ yo’ lon’, but I do wants ter pra’, ef yo’ pleas’es suhs.”
 CHAPTER XI.
Mob Spirit of Lick Skillet.

At the time of this dramatic period in the life of “Uncle” Alex, the
greatest excitement prevailed elsewhere in Lick Skillet
neighborhood, as Allen Dodson and his neighbors, armed with rifles
and led by blood hounds, pursued the trail of Leslie Duncan, a son of
Laura, whom the reader met in the first chapter of this story, firmly
determined to hang him to the first convenient limb and riddle his
body with bullets. With a pitch-fork he had stabbed Willie Hudson,
Allen’s 15 year old son and inflicted a severe wound in the stomach,
for whipping him with a lash. Besides, in leaving the Dodson farm he
had broken a labor contract which he had made with Mr. Dodson at
one dollar per week and board, and deserved to be captured and
shot without the expense and formality of a trial in a legalized court
of justice!
“Unless we make an example of this ‘nigger,’” said the leader of
the party, as they took a short rest, propped up on their guns, “it will
soon come to a pass that we might as well try to control the winds as
these terrifying black brutes. If we don’t subdue them they will
subdue us. That’s what old Ben Tillman says, and he knows. Good
God, fellows, you ought to have heard that old one-eyed rebel speak
the other night at Daleyville. I’d vote for him for any position he might
want. I would even vote to change the form of government in
America and make him Emperor if I only had the chance!”
Long, loud and enthusiastic cheering followed this declaration by
Millard Dodson, the eldest son of Allen, whose eternal enmity for
Leslie was quite well understood by all members of the mob as well
as by others of his neighbors. Those who refused to join in the
attempted capture and assassination said that the boy had a right to
defend himself, and intimated that the quarrel and fight were
precipitated by Millard to rid the community of Leslie who was paying
entirely too much attention to Matilda Deas, a nineteen year old
mulatto employed as cook in the Dodson home, whose affection for
Leslie dated back to their school days together eight years before, to
suit Millard. His wife had on one occasion abandoned him and
threatened a separation on account of the gossip of intimacy
between him and Matilda. Leslie, who had departed in haste after
wounding the boy, which incident took place three hours before it
was timed by Millard to come off made good use of the spare
moments at his disposal for eluding the mob, which he knew in his
own mind would follow him, unopposed by the police authorities, and
execute him if his capture could be effected.
With him it was a case of life, with Matilda and children and a
happy home, although he knew the sacred purity and virtue of his
betrothed had been despoiled by the lust of one of the men, at least,
seeking his life; if he could escape this was possible; otherwise it
was death with all the tortures of the damned. So he spurred himself
on and onward in his flight, through tangled woods and swamps,
across deep and swift flowing streams, over hills and high
precipices, down through the valleys and old fashioned fields,
stopping only once in ten hours to rest at a Negro farm home, where
he was given some food and a small bit of change to aid him along
on his journey to a place of safety, if place of safety beyond the
grave there was! Twice or thrice he heard the barking of dogs and
the voices of men as nearer and nearer they approached and his
heart almost stopped beating. It developed that what he did hear
was the reports of cattle buyers from the West who were in the
South buying up the “scrub stock” to take to the plains to fatten for
the Chicago packing houses. As fear of being overtaken and
summarily put to death, without a last word or look or kiss from his
sweetheart, would tend to accelerate his speed, so would that joy he
felt over the possibility of escape and final reunion with Matilda
cause him to double and redouble his energies in his onward course
in the mad race for life.
His pursuers discounting the cleverness of the Negro in selecting
only unfrequented roads and abandoned farm-houses, as places of
travel and concealment when a rest became imperative, had lost the
trail at the beginning of the hunt and on the second morning,
although they searched diligently until midnight on the evening
before, found the hunters and their bird of prey some thirty odd miles
apart. Dissentions had arisen among the members over the conduct
of the chase at the beginning which for a while threatened to break
up the party, but about this time Ben Milligan, who was drunk when
the party first set out and unable to go at first call joined them with a
gallon of “Old North Carolina Corn,” and the information that Leslie
had been seen only a few hours before in the Shinburnally
neighborhood. Under the stimulation of the whiskey and the false
promises of the leader of the mob to pay the party first to lay hands
on Leslie Duncan the sum of twenty-five dollars, new momentum
was injected into the chase and as long as the whiskey lasted it was
energetic enough to elicit the praise of the most pronounced grouch
among the men.
But miscalculations were again made, as Leslie was many miles
from Shinburnally and was going as fast as his tired legs could carry
him on and on in an opposite direction.
In the meantime, Mrs. Millard Dodson in a rage of indignation over
the report going the rounds of the neighborhood and gaining
credence each day that the ‘yaller woman’ at her home had
succeeded in alienating the affections of her husband completely,
had taken advantage of Millard’s absence to rid her household of the
presence of the person she conceived to be the source of much of
her domestic infelicity, shame and disgrace. With the aid of John
Quincy, her eldest son, she had administered a terrible beating to the
woman and at the point of a gun had marched her three miles from
the farm and after commanding her to go and admonishing her never
to show herself in Lick Skillet again on penalty of death, left her and
returned to the house, stopping at each of the neighbor’s houses to
inform them of what she had done.
During her absence from the house, Millard and his party, which
had postponed the chase for want of more whiskey, had returned
and were ransacking the pantries and side boards in the dining room
as she entered, in quest of food which they had gone without for
nearly thirty-six hours.
 “Where’s Matilda?” inquired Millard, as his wife suddenly entered
the house.
“That Negro wench is gone” she told him in a calm,
unimpassioned voice, “and gone forever. I have borne the disgrace
of the reported relation between her and you as long as I can, much
longer and far more patiently than I should have been expected to,
so I gave her a whipping which she will never forget and took the
gun and marched her away with such a warning that will be heeded.”
Millard tried hard to conceal the effect which the temporary loss of
his paramour had on him by approving the action of his wife; at the
same time he assured her that the common gossip of the
neighborhood was without the least foundation, and that it would
have aided in the capture had Matilda been retained for a few days
longer. But that indescribable inner consciousness which betrays
guilt and convicts the criminal beyond the hope of escape, except
through suicide, and suicide is not escape, marked the stain of
dishonor and shame all over his countenance with its brush of
indelible guilt.
After the departure of the members of the mob, pandemonium
broke loose in the Dodson home over Millard’s attempt to chastise
his wife for running Matilda away, being intercepted by his two
daughters and the energetic pugilistic activities of the wife. When the
resounding, reverberating atmosphere had cleared away the father
found two large bruises on his face and a slight wound in the back
from a knife as evidence, proof and positive, that his was essentially
a family of fighters on the mother’s side at least. Matilda, at this time,
was more than ten miles away and happy as a bird suddenly freed
from its cage except for one thing which burdened her soul as no
other event had ever done since the evening that the beastly Dodson
had forced her to surrender her body to his passion in satisfying his
greedy lust, and that one thing was the ignorance in which she lived
of the safety and security of her lover, Leslie, whom she felt quite
sure by or before that hour had been captured and lynched.
Maybe he had made good his escape. For the latter she had
hoped and prayed with the earnestness, desperation and despair
with which she so long warded off the entreaties and appeals of
Dodson when he first made the advances which finally culminated in
the degradation of her life. Her miserable life was spent in his home
only under compulsion, the compulsion of a labor contract entered
into by her in legal form, a breach of which she knew from the
experience of other colored women employed under such terms and
conditions meant only one thing—a term of penal servitude at the
hardest of the most degraded sort of labor!
So she had determined to carry out her part of the contract and at
the end of it marry Leslie and settle down in a home of her own, to
bless it, perhaps, with the voices of children and all the endearments
which the relations of father, mother and child mean to mankind.
But in a world of strange and unfriendly relations, the only sort of a
world which she had ever known, having been but eight years old on
the day of the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, in the
great white-heat of the conflict being waged by the whites of the
North and the whites and the Negroes of the South in that great
historical drama known all over the civilized world as the
“Reconstruction Period!” What blighted hopes they should have
been! Meditating over the hopelessness of her present plight,
separated from her lover, whose body at that moment for all she
knew might be dangling at the end of a rope, stung to the heart by
hundreds of bullets from the guns of armed murderers; and without
the reach, comfort and consolation of her father, who was at that
time serving a sentence in the penitentiary for disposing of a crop
under lien, the spirit of despair was rapidly enveloping her troubled
soul, when lo, and behold, there appeared before her no other a
person than Dodson on his swiftest mare with Leslie in tow, tied hard
and fast to his saddle! As unexpected as a bolt of lightning from the
clear blue sky and with the vigor and fierceness of a tiger she sprang
between the horse and the bound boy and began biting and knawing
at the rope with the voracity of a starving lion in contact with its hunk
of meat.
At first Millard drew his pistol and threatened to shoot if she did not
desist but paying no attention at all to his demands she kept on
chewing the rope as if she had not heard, when Leslie managed to
secure his knife from his pocket and get it into her hands with which
she cut the rope in two, and set her lover free. Then facing her
traducer and heaping curse after curse upon him and daring him to
shoot, she managed to distract his attention from Leslie and give the
latter time to get out of reach, which he did, remaining, however,
near by in concealment ready at any moment to spring upon his
adversary and engage him in mortal combat if further harm
threatened his sweetheart.
For the purpose of making Leslie’s escape secure. Matilda
consented to return with Dodson on condition that the charges
against her lover be withdrawn and he be allowed to leave the
country unmolested by any mob or officers of the law; and seating
herself behind him on his swift, gay, young horse the two had
scarcely begun the journey back home when the girl spied Leslie in
hiding. With the dexterity of a born adroit sleuth she extracted from
one of the pockets in the back of Dodson’s pants the pistol with
which he had failed to frighten her and dropped it silently in the dust
before the eyes of Leslie, all unknown to Dodson. In the next few
moments the latter was looking down the barrel of his own gun, his
teeth chattering as if suddenly attacked by a chill and his whole body
shaking and quivering as if in the throes of an ague. He very quickly
consented to be bound hand and foot and tied to a tree in the woods
some distance from the road-side and forever abandon the
prosecution of Leslie, and permit Matilda to go in peace and trouble
her no more, as the price of his life, now at the mercy of those whose
liberty of body and soul less than an hour before was entirely in his
hands to be dealt with as he wished.
 CHAPTER XII.
Great Progress of Negro.

The predicament of Millard was rendered all the more distressing

by the engagement of most of his friends in the conspiracy against
the life of “Uncle” Alex Bettis. They were not in ignorance, however,
of the chase for Leslie Duncan and the desire to get into it
themselves probably hastened the brief consultation which resulted
in the release of Bettis on his promise to see to it that the classes of
study in his school included agriculture and not social and political
economy. Besides Brother Bettis’ prayer was a masterful plea for the
forgiveness of the sins of those bent on taking his life. It was
pathetic. Some of the mob shed tears, real heart-felt tears, that flow
from the heart in our moments of contemplation of the generousness
of God and beauty of his handiwork as naturally as rain from a
mountain summer cloud.
Those who felt the Omnipotent power of God in the kindness and
prayers of this simple old colored man counselled with the more
marble-hearted and vicious of their number, and all at last agreed
that while the old man’s magnetic influence and his powerful,
mysterious control over himself in a period of the greatest suspense
might prove a monster with which they would have to deal later on,
none could have the heart wicked enough to put him to death.
So Mr. Bettis demonstrated a strategic ability that should prove to
be the admiration of white men, learned and skilled in the art of
strategy, as well as proved conclusively in his own case, the efficacy
and power of prayer. Until the day of his death he always maintained
that it was not the delay which the preparation of the dinner
occasioned giving him time to influence the men against taking his
life; nor, indeed the kindness displayed in the act of feeding and
nourishing his enemies, but wholly and absolutely the power of God
in answer to prayer!
 This demonstration in his own case of the saving efficacy of prayer
was worth more to him than all the volumes of theology ever written
could have been in reaching the ears and hearts of his benighted
followers, who had to be made to see and feel with their own sense
of sight and touch the evidence of the tangible things which an
educated mind finds, without literal interpretation, in everything, even
in rocks and stones and running brooks.
He preached not to the heads of his hearers, but to their hearts;
not about Emerson, Spencer, Napoleon, or Shakespeare, but about
Jesus Christ, His death, His resurrection and His power to resurrect
even them, as He was resurrected if only they would believe on Him
and live such lives as He had lived.
Is it not remarkable that a man with the power to carry such a
message to those who stood in such great need if it should have
been singled out for destruction by those whose interest he was
serving in disseminating the unadulterated doctrine of the lowly
Nazarene? Yet history of sacred and profane origin all record that
the men and women who really benefit their kind do so at the risk of
martyring themselves.
The power of prayer which the Rev. Alexander Bettis used so
dramatically in rescuing himself from an ignominous death was used
effectively in the establishment and later the development of a great
school in which through the adoption of the methods pursued at the
Schofield school at Aiken, the condition of thousands of children and
hundreds of homes have been reformed, even transformed,
revolutionized and made new. This school in honor of its founder and
executive head until the day of his death is known as the Bettis
Academy and is located on a farm of several hundred acres near
Trenton, S. C. The interest taken in it at its earliest inception by Miss
Schofield, together with the great work done by Mr. Bettis at his own
expense without any compensation whatever, made the institution
possible and a force from the start in the education of the Negroes
from many of the counties of South Carolina and Georgia.
The great personality of the founder attracted to the school like a
loadstone, large numbers of Negroes, and Miss Schofield, who
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebooknice.com