Bricks Without Straw: A Novel

by Albion Winegar Tourgée

"We claim," he continued, "that he is ignorant. It is true. Are we afraid that he will grow wiser than we? We claim that he has not the capacity to acquire or receive a like intellectual development with ourselves. Are we afraid to give him a chance to do so? Could not intelligence cope with ignorance without fraud? Boasting that we could outrun our adversary, would we hamstring him at the starting-post? It was accounted by all men, in all ages, an unmanly thing to steal, and a yet more unmanly thing to steal from the weak; so that it has passed into a proverb, 'Only a dog would steal the blind man's dinner.' And yet," he said, "we are willing to steal the vote of the ignorant, the blind, the helpless colored man!"

It was not for the sake of the colored man, he said in conclusion, that he appealed to them to pause and think. It was because the honor, the nobility, the intelligence of the white man was being degraded by the course which passion and resentment, and not reason or patriotism, had dictated. He appealed to his hearers as white men, not so much to give to the colored man the right to express his sentiments at the ballot-box, as to regard that right as sacred because it rested upon the law, which constituted the foundation and safeguard of their own rights. He would not appeal to them as Southern men, for he hoped the day was at hand when there would no more be any such distinction. But he would appeal to them as men—honest men, honorable men—and as American citizens, to honor the law and thereby honor themselves.

It had been said that the best and surest way to secure the repeal of a bad law was first to secure its unhindered operation. Especially was this true of a people who had boasted of unparalleled devotion to principle, of unbounded honor, and of the highest chivalry. How one of them, or all of them, could claim any of these attributes of which they had so long boasted, and yet be privy to depriving even a single colored man of the right which the Nation had given him, or to making the exercise of that right a mockery, he could not conceive; and he would not believe that they would do it when once the scales of prejudice and resentment had fallen from their eyes. If they had been wronged and outraged as a people, their only fit revenge was to display a manhood and a magnanimity which should attest the superiority upon which they prided themselves.

This address was received by his white hearers with surprised silence; by the colored men with half-appreciative cheers. They recognized that the speaker was their friend, and in favor of their being allowed the free exercise of the rights of citizenship. His white auditors saw that he was assailing with some bitterness and earnest indignation both their conduct and what they had been accustomed to term their principles. There was no immediate display of hostility or anger; and Hesden Le Moyne returned to his home full of hope that the time was at hand for which he had so long yearned, when the people of his native South should abandon the career of prejudice and violence into which they had been betrayed by resentment and passion.

Early the next morning some of his friends waited upon him and adjured him, for his own sake, for the sake of his family and friends, to withdraw from the canvass. This he refused to do. He said that what he advocated was the result of earnest conviction, and he should always despise himself should he abandon the course he had calmly decided to take. Whatever the result, he would continue to the end. Then they cautiously intimated to him that his course was fraught with personal danger. "What!" he cried, "do you expect me to flinch at the thought of danger? I offered my life and gave an arm for a cause in which I did not believe; shall I not brave as much in the endeavor to serve my country in a manner which my mind and conscience approve? I seek for difficulty with no one; but it may as well be understood that Hesden Le Moyne does not turn in his tracks because of any man's anger. I say to you plainly that I shall neither offer personal insult nor submit to it in this canvass."

His friends left him with heavy hearts, for they foreboded ill. It was not many days before he found that the storm of detraction and contumely through which he had once passed was but a gentle shower compared with the tornado which now came down upon his head. The newspapers overflowed with threat, denunciation, and abuse. One of them declared:

"The man who thinks that he can lead an opposition against the organized Democracy of Horsford County is not only very presumptuous, but extremely bold. Such a man will require a bodyguard of Democrats in his canvass and a Gibraltar in his rear on the day of the election."

Another said:

"The Radical candidate would do well to take advice. The white men of the State desire a peaceful summer and autumn. They are wearied of heated political strife. If they are forced to vigorous action it will be exceedingly vigorous, perhaps unpleasantly so. Those who cause the trouble will suffer most from it. Bear that in mind, persons colored and white-skinned. We reiterate our advice to the reflective and argumentative Radical leader, to be careful how he goes, and not stir up the animals too freely; they have teeth and claws."

Still another said: