THE CORONER'S INQUEST.
The revolutionary iconoclasts had fully established their sway in the worst and most irritating forms; their resources, directed by irresponsible and offensive authority—controlling the fortunes, hopes and fate of all classes—ramified and extended throughout the South. Mountebanks sat in judgment upon the lives and liberties of a vanquished people; everywhere violating all the guaranties of freedom. The alarming vibrations of this unhallowed power were felt in every home. It was a matter of anxious and fearful thought, "What must be the result of collisions that are sure to come?" It were vain to threaten consequences badgered as the people were into passive submission by a power that ruled supreme—a power that was conducting its operations with unmeasured cruelty wherever the ill-starred Confederacy had raised its hated crest. Retaliation swift and sure pursued a few of the misguided negroes whose black hands were upraised to smite the South. Now and then, under the shadow of the citadel that was garrisoned by the pensioned slaves, the victims of the murderous knife or deadly bullet would be found. Hence the South was the harvest field for the functionaries who delighted in the sudden visitations of Providence, and who looked for the vultures upon circling pinions above the river as couriers of cheering messages; in the language of the negroes, as the "sky sheruffs" who served due notice upon the oppressed taxpayers of this patronizing government of the freedmen.
By a custom that obtained very generally in the South in the post-bellum days, there was a division of offices inequitably made, however, between the carpet-baggers and the negroes; and to the negroes was assigned among others of inconsiderable revenue, the office of county coroner. This office for many generations before the war was a sinecure, but a pictorial page now appears in the history of reconstruction, electrotyped in disgusting caricatures. The office of coroner was constructed out of a mediæval original; it was both ancient and honorable—a remnant of the feudal system that superseded other forms of government in Europe before and since the crusade. So considerable were its revenues and dignity, that the lords chief justices of the King's Bench of England coveted and enjoyed its emoluments and title; and to descend from an antiquity so dignified and remote, from bewigged and begowned lords justices to 15th amendment freedmen, was quite a sheer descent. But reconstruction came with fantastical ideals; with its own peculiar and irritating forms and institutions, and the political fabric was ludicrously inverted and the freedmen appeared to walk through the air on stilts.
When post-mortem investigations were exceedingly rare in a county that boasted of its healthfulness and its obedience to law, the per diem of the coroner was fixed by legislative enactment to ten dollars, with certain enumerated charges, such as summoning, swearing and empanelling the jury of inquest. But now there was an epidemic of accidental deaths in this phenomenal era. Among the negroes the most natural thing was to die—to die from exposure, from starvation, and sometimes from heroic doses of manhood suffrage. They died in the river, in the creek, in the lowgrounds. Old Uncle Elijah Thorpe, the coroner, would sit moodily by the hour on his dilapidated stoop, intently gazing into the firmament above him for the appearance of "de sky shurruff," and when the circling scavengers of the country would flap and dip their pinions below the fringe of the cypresses that bordered the river, his spirits would revive, and refreshing smiles would play hide and seek in the black caverns of his face.
The old coroner like Judge Blackstock, appeared to be the "survival of the fittest." He had come out of the toils of slavery with his hair as white as the snow, and with lines in his black face as if a "new ground plow" had been running furrows into it. He was an old man when the great guns were celebrating the emancipation of four million slaves. He was an old man when the bosses placed into his horny, gouty hand the elective franchise. He was an old man when he looked out one night, when the stars were twinkling in the mid-heavens, and saw the luminary of freedom with its bewildering corruscations. He was the advanced guard of the freedmen who welcomed the agent of the bureau with waving of hats and clapping of resounding hands. He was the file leader of Laflin's black reinforcements. When Elijah began to grow rich out of the spoils of his office he observed in a confidential way to Laflin,
"Ef de niggers keeps er gitten sassinated lak deys agwine on und de jurer don't gin out, dis heer Soufland is agwine ter be a sametary from one eend to de tother; the buzzards is lak a passel ob rode hands er cummin und agwine," and then to disarm the carpet-bagger's cupidity he continued with a lugubrious cast of countenance, "By de time I gits de rashuns from de kommissery und de sperrits fur de jurer dars a mity leetle spec left ob de poreseeds. De pay boss haint ekal to de sponsuality of de offis."
These post-mortem inquiries, like all other functions of the time, presented most ridiculous contrasts. While the circling carrion crows were looking for dead negroes in the river and swamps, the negro women in the cabins and kitchens were watching the movements of the coroner; and whenever the public became advised "dat de corps ob humans was to be sot upon" if the news came in the dead of the night, an outcry would go from cabin to cabin; dusky faces would appear at dirty windows and an inquiry in staccato from some sister would arouse her neighbour.
"Oh! Sophia Ann, has yu heerd de news, or is yu pine blank ded? De crowner has dun und put de saddle on ole 'sametary' und de saddle-bags und de jimmyjon too, und agwine ter set on er corps fortwid."