Tar Heel Tales

by H. E. C. Bryant

But I was forced to forget Speaking Henry and Rich Lilly. Other incidents, more exciting and more strenuous, were in progress. Big Bill Sutton had come upon the rostrum and was throwing delegates east and west. Having the advantage of a tremendous frame and a notorious reputation as a scrapper he walked roughshod over less fortunate ones. But there was one man, with a keen eye, an iron face and frosted hair, that was not afraid to face him, and that was Mr. Dan Morrison, of Rockingham, a Republican leader at that time.

As old man Bill surged on the rostrum his son, Dave, screamed back at Henry Covington from the hall. I saw Mr. Morrison climb on the rostrum, and knew that he was mad. He and Big Bill glowered at each other for an instant at twenty paces. Two seconds later they were rushing at each other, like vicious dogs. They did not have a head-on collision, but side-swiped. The Rockingham man got the best of the first round; he tore Sutton’s collar and tie from his neck and held it between the thumb and forefinger, so that all might see. Friends interfered and prevented an ugly affair.

“Clear the rostrum!” shouted some one from the hall.

That is what the chairmen and their friends had been trying to do for some minutes. But the delegates crowded around the edge until they were fifteen or twenty deep and the rostrum was alive with opposing factions.

After the Morrison-Sutton mix-up the fighting became general. Some fellow in the house knocked Dr. Norment over a seat, jamming his pipe stem halfway down his throat.

Times were beginning to look squally for me, and I had no way out. To my left was a window, but if I went out that it meant a fall of 20 feet to the ground; to my right, an anteroom, with a small, thin wall; going out, down the steps from the rostrum, the way I came in, seemed at that time an impossibility. While considering the advisability of going into the anteroom and closing the door I saw an upheaval across from me and before I could catch my breath an old darkey sailed into the room and slammed the door and I was cut off there.

All the while the mob on the rostrum became blacker and more like a negro festival. The old cornfield negroes were just beginning to catch the spirit of the meeting. As the colored delegates increased the white ones stole away, imagining that something would be doing soon.

Seeing the change in color and temperament of the stage crowd I began to have serious concern about my own welfare. Had the fight been among my own people I might have taken a hand, but to sit idly by and be punctured with a pistol or a knife was not to my liking. I was slow in making up my mind. But there came a time when I had to act before thinking it over. As I sat there and wondered what injuries I would receive if I jumped out the window, a big negro, perhaps a ditcher, clad in overalls and wearing a cap and high-top boots, broke through the mob in the hall, jumped up on the stand immediately in front of me, and began to finger in his boot and swear. I heard him mumble to himself: “I’ll be d—d ef I don’t clar dis hall when I get ole Sallie.”

I had an idea that “Ole Sallie” was a weapon of some sort, and I was right, for a half a second later the big nigger rose to his full height, threw open a razor, turned around three times (coming close to me as he wheeled) and yelled, “Git off uv dis stage, don’t I’ll cut yo’ throats—every one uv you.”

I was the first to leave, going over the heads of the mob that had collected about the edge of the stage. My notebook flew to the right and my lapboard to the left, while I continued my flight straight ahead down the tramway. As I struck the street, old man B. B. Terry, whom I knew very well, stood behind the wall of the brick building, and peeping up the exit, said: “I gad, that’s no place for a well man, much less a cripple.” I did not argue the point.