“Why Deacon, I thought yo’ was just saying we is getting along the best. I was born in South Car’lina, an’ so was mos’ all the collud people in the State to-day, and ain’t we South Carolinians then? Now all I has got to say is, that it’s a mighty mean man as won’t stand to his own. It war the ’publican party as made me a free man, an’ I reckon I shall vote ’publican long as I breaves! That is all I can say, Deacon. I don’t know no mo’.”
“Hud up!” said the Deacon, and he rode abruptly away.
“What on earth has come over Deacon Atwood, I wonder,” said Mr. Kelley, to a tall, muscular black man, who, swinging his hoe lazily, had at length planted his row abreast with the spot where his employer had dropped his when the Deacon saluted him.
“Talking ’bout politics, I reckon!” was the drawling reply.
“Yes, and he did make some awful threats! Why, Pompey, he said they’d lots of the niggers ’round here get killed ’fo’ election if we didn’t come ovah to the democratic party! Now I’ve hearn that kind o’ talk ever since reconstruction, but I never did, myself, hear the Deacon, nor no such ’spectable and ’ligious men talk it ’fo’; though they say they did talk it, an’ gone done it, too, in some places. He says it’s a general thing now, from shor’ to shor’ this time ’mong the gem’men. He says the taxes is ruining the country, an’ niggers an’ carpet-baggers is in all the offices, an’ the money is wasted, an’ there’s got to be a change.”
“Oh, —— —— him! It’s just the odder way about—shutting up offices—doing away wid ’em, an’ turning de niggahs out to make room for old confederate soldiers! I hearn Kanrasp, an’ Striker, an’ Rathburn, an’ some o’ them big fellahs talkin’ ’bout it dar in Aiken.”
(Pompey had boarded in a certain public institution at the county seat for the greater safety of the contents of market-wagons in the town where he resided.)
“The land mos’ all b’longs to the white folks, sho nuff, an’ the rent is so awful high that a nigger has got to work hisself an’ his family mos’ to death to keep from gittin’ inter debt to de boss, let alone a decent livin’, an’ now the gem’men is bound to resist the taxes fo’ the schools, so our chillun can’t have no schools. I thinks it’s toughest on our side!” said Kelley.
“Kanrasp said de Governor is doin’ splendid,” continued Pompey, “cuttin’ down expenses so dey is a gwoine to save a million an’ seventeen hundred an’ nineteen thousand dollars an’ mo’ in one year; or he did save it last year.”