"Well Laflin], he do, und I mout wote fore I git de pay, und yer man mout not git lected, den my wote wud be flung away, und de munny und de sperrits too, dats de pint. Yer see, boss," Joshua continued argumentatively, "us franksized woters is bleeged to make er leetle kalkerlashun und den ef we gits disappinted its kase de white fokses obersizes de niggers. Don't yer see how de cat is agwine to jump, boss?" he whispered confidentially, "yer mout put de spirits in de jimmyjon now, und I mout take a drap ur too fore I wotes und yer mout hold back de munny twelt yer man is lected; how dos dat do?"
"All right," announced the scalawag. "You come with me." And old Joshua in his "hop, step and go fetchit" way followed the politician until he brought up squarely against one of Laflin's lieutenants, who took him savagely by the limp paper collar.
"Wher's yer agwine lak a struttin turkey gobbler, wid dat white man, yer fool nigger? Don't yer know dat ar white trash will put yer back in slabery?"
The rival candidates were running for the legislature. On one side of the court house square were aligned the adherents of Laflin, the carpet-bagger; on the other side the adherents of Hale the scalawag. Each was haranguing the black sovereigns of the South—men who in other fields had toiled ever so hard for their country, but whose hands were unskilled, and whose minds were untutored in this the grandest of human endeavors—the building up of an immense superstructure that shall stand "four square to all the winds that blow."
Each candidate had his claquers, slipping into rough, horny hands the paper representative of manhood, intellectual, patriotic manhood—manhood compromised by no overt act of treason.
Every star and every stripe upon that magnificent banner just overhead accentuated the fact that in devious wanderings over blood stained battle fields, fire scathed villages, homes and plantations it had followed manhood suffrage as faithfully as it did the tithing agent throughout the South. Suspended above the heads of the free men, across the street, was this blood-red warning "No man shall vote here who followed Lee and Jackson." Vain delusion; as if there could be treason under that flag; or traitors lurking in its shadows like mad Malays! Stranger still, that the dust of Jackson should re-animate hearts that had been broken in a catastrophe, too terrible to be uttered by patriots. Strangest of all, that living heroes should gather at a banquet where toasts were spoken in frantic curses of the brave by fanatics! To the right were barrels of whiskey on tap; to the left were huge piles of yellow tickets with appropriate devices upon them; and to the front waved over a bloodless conquest the "Star Spangled banner," just as triumphantly as it did at the head of the charging battalions of Lee and Jackson in Mexico, just as proudly as when the Southern cross yielded its sovereignty upon the ill-starred field of Appomattox. Crimsoned to a deeper blush to-day methinks because it is made to dishonor Lee and Jackson, who shall live forever in the pantheon of history—as men worthy of emulation, as heroes whose fame is already written upon amaranthine tablets.
"Who sees them act but envies every deed—
Who hears them groan and does not wish to bleed;
Great men struggling with the storms of state,
And greatly fallen with a falling state."
"Welcome, my son, here lay him down, my friends,
Full in my sight, that I may view at leisure
The bloody corse and count those glorious wounds.
How beautiful is death when earned by virtue."
About high noon Joshua, with his old beaver caved in on both sides and one skirt of his blue coat torn away, was seen to oscillate, as it were, betwixt the whiskey barrel on the Laflin side and the rum barrel on Hales' side, and doubtless, so far as his vote was concerned, preserving a strict neutrality, that is to say, in the plantation language of the old negro, "Bress de Lawd, I was so flushtrated wid dat meextry o' rum und sperrits dat I flung in six wotes fur de cyarpet-sacker und er eben haf dozen fur de scalyhorg." The result officially declared, made the agreement between Joshua and Hales' manager about the payment of money "arter yo man is dun und lected" a nude pact.
Laflin was nominated, and in his address to his constituents flattered himself that the nomination came unsought and with practical unanimity.