Other Fools and Their Doings, or, Life among the Freedmen

by H. N. K. Goff

“What about the book, sonny,” asked Elder Jackson.

“My Sunday school teacher says when I’m afraid, I must ask God what to do; and this is His letter, He wrote it. It’s big,” tugging to raise it to the level of the man’s hand.

The Elder took the Bible, sat down, drew the child to his side, opened it at random, and read, Isaiah xviii: 7: “In that time shall the present be brought unto the Lord of hosts of a people scattered and peeled, and from a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, the Mount Zion.”

He closed the book muttering, “Yes, the freshet came clear up to the church, clear up to the church.”

“The whole matter is that the Bakers are determined to break up this drilling,” said Marmor. “You’re too good a drill master, Doc. The old man himself told me that it was wrong, and that the niggers shouldn’t have no militia company, and that it was wrong for you to drill by moonlight. I told him that the white militia over here in Georgia drilled on the streets every night. ‘Well, it’s wrong for the niggers to drill at all,’ says he.”

“Well, now, it does ’pear to me like the white folks is determined to put the devil into the colored people’s heads anyhow. Now, we’re honest in this matter, and only want to have a nice militia company like the white folks does, and like free citizens has got a right to, and to protect the State when it needs it and the Governor calls for us; but they just goes to work, and by talking about what they pretend the colored people is a going, or intending to do, they just makes the colored people mad, and puts these bad ideas into their heads, and by-and-by the colored people, maybe will get courage enough to undertake to do as they is really instructing us to do. And then there’s more’n that in it too. Mor’n two months ago Hanson Baker tole me and John Peters, Press Wells, and John Bade, and if I mistake not, Lem Panesly, that the Democrats had made it up in their own minds, and they had gone over the State, and also had about thirty men from Texas and Mississippi to come into this State, and they were feeding them, and organizing all the white men into certain different clubs; and before election that there had to be a certain number of negroes killed—leading men; and if after that they found out they couldn’t carry the State that way, they was gwoine to kill enough so that they could carry the majority. He said it is a fact that that has to be done, and he said in the presence of these men, that it had to start right here in Baconsville. He said Baconsville is the leading place in the county (for the niggers, you know), and if they could be successful in killing them that they wanted to in Baconsville, they could carry the county; but the same has to be done in all the counties, that there was no way to prevent it. I told him we had some laws, and a Governor and a President. He says he didn’t belong to none o’ the clubs, and hadn’t nothing to do with it, but it would be done, shor. I says, ‘Suppose the colored men have a poll to themselves, and the white men to themselves,’ and he said, ‘It don’t make a bit o’ difference what sort o’ polls they have; it is the voting we want to stop; and these voting niggers has got to be killed. The white men has declared that the State has got to be ruled by white men again, and we have got to have just such a government as we had before the war; and when we git it, all the poor men and the niggers has got to be disfranchised, and the rich men will rule! And he tole me then that our town marshal, John Carr and Dan will certainly be killed. I asked why? and he said there was plenty of men that had plenty against them, and they would kill them shor. Says I, ‘Mr. Baker will I be in that number?’ he says, ‘No, I don’t know whether yo’r name is down or no, but it depends on how yo’ behave yo’self.’ He’d been drinking some, or he wouldn’t ha’ been so free to tell. Well, then I received a note the other day—a letter with my name, and specifying a dozen or more in this neighborhood that have to be killed; and I was shor to be killed. Now, this is the beginning of it shor. They want to disband this company so that the Governor won’t have nothing to call on to put them down, and we can’t get no protection till the United States can send soldiers from somewhere, after we can get word to the Governor, and he can git it to Grant. They must think we’re just cowards and fools if we’ll let ’em break us up, though I’ll agree that the men ha’n’t got much fight in ’em, but I have, and I wish they had,” and Captain Doc tossed a newspaper to the extreme end of the room.

“Scattered and peeled!” “Scattered and peeled!” said the Elder, as he resumed his striding about the apartment.

While these excited men thus conversed, there were borne from the street to their ears the sound of blood-curdling oaths, and shouts of “We’ll carry the State about the time we’ve killed four or five hundred of these niggers and their carpet-bag cronies.” We’ve got to have South Carolina.” “The white men have got to rule.” “This shall be a white man’s government again.”