Frequenters of the Capitol—whether loungers or politicians—had soon become familiar with the figure of one of the De Willoughby claimants. It was too large a figure not to be quickly marked and unavoidably remembered. Big Tom slowly mounting the marble steps or standing on the corridors was an object to attract attention, and inquiries being answered by the information that he was a party to one of the largest claims yet made, he not unnaturally was discussed with interest.
“He’s from the depths of the mountains of North Carolina,” it was explained; “he keeps a cross-roads store and post-office, but he has some of the best blood of the South in his veins, and his claim is enormous.”
“Will he gain it?”
“Who knows? He has mortgaged all he owns to make the effort. The claim is inherited from his father, Judge De Willoughby, who died at the close of the war. As he lived and died within the Confederacy, the Government holds that he was disloyal and means to make the most of it. The claimants hold that they can prove him loyal. They’ll have to prove it thoroughly. The Government is growing restive over the claims of Southerners, and there is bitter opposition to be overcome.”
“Yes. Lyman nearly lost his last election because he had favoured a Southern claim in his previous term. His constituents are country patriots, and they said they weren’t sending a man to Congress to vote for Rebs.”
“That’s the trouble. When men’s votes are endangered by a course of action they grow ultra-conservative. A vote’s a vote.”
That was the difficulty, as Tom found. A vote was a vote. The bitterness of war had not yet receded far enough into the past to allow of unprejudiced judgment. Members of political parties were still enemies, wrongs still rankled, graves were yet new, wounds still ached and burned. Men who had found it to their interest to keep at fever heat the fierce spirit of the past four years of struggle and bloodshed, were not willing to relinquish the tactics which had brought fortunes to them. The higher-minded were determined that where justice was done it should be done where it was justice alone, clearly proved to be so. There had been too many false and idle claims brought forward to admit of the true ones being accepted without investigation and delay. In the days when old Judge De Willoughby had walked through the streets of Delisleville, ostracized and almost hooted as he passed among those who had once been his friends, it would not have been difficult to prove that he was loyal to the detested Government, but in these later times, when the old man lay quiet in what his few remaining contemporaries still chose to consider a dishonoured grave, undeniable proof of a loyalty which now would tend to the honour and advantage of those who were of his blood was not easy to produce.
“The man lived and died in the Confederacy,” was said by those who were in power in Washington.
“He was constructively a rebel. We want proof—proof.”
Most of those who might have furnished it if they would, were either scattered as to the four winds of the earth, or were determined to give no aid in the matter.