The chief flaw in this village parliament was the absence of an opposition. Among all the accustomed assemblage of men who sat about, their hats well back on their heads, their mouths full of strong language and tobacco, there was none to disagree upon any essential feature of the situation with the others. To secure even the merest semblance of variety, those whose instincts were cross-grained had to go out of their way to pick up trifling points of difference, and the arguments over these had to be spun out with the greatest possible care, to be kept going at all. I should fancy, however, that this apparent concord only served to keep before their minds, with added persistency, the fact that there was an opposition, nursing its heretical wrath in solitude up on the Beech farm. At all events, I seemed never to go into the grocery of a night without hearing bitter remarks, or even curses, levelled at our household.
It was from these casual visits—standing about on the outskirts of the gathering, beyond the feeble ring of light thrown out by the kerosene lamp on the counter—that I learned how deeply the Corners were opposed to peace. It appeared from the talk here that there was something very like treason at the front. The victory at Antietam—so dearly bought with the blood of our own people—had been, they said, of worse than no use at all. The defeated Rebels had been allowed to take their own time in crossing the Potomac comfortably. They had not been pursued or molested since, and the Corners could only account for this on the theory of treachery at Union headquarters. Some only hinted guardedly at this. Others declared openly that the North was being sold out by its own generals. As for old “Jee” Hagadorn, who came in almost every night, and monopolized the talking all the while he was present, he made no bones of denouncing McClellan and Porter as traitors who must be hanged.
Quivering with excitement, the red stubbly hair standing up all round his drawn and livid face, his knuckles rapping out one fierce point after another on the candle-box, as he filled the little hot room with angry declamation. “Go it, Jee!”
“Give ’em Hell!”
“Hangin’s too good for ’em!” his auditors used to exclaim in encouragement, whenever he paused for breath, and then he would start off again still more furiously, till he had to gasp after every word, and screamed “Lincoln-ah!” “Lee-ah!” “Antietam-ah!” and so on, into our perturbed ears. Then I would go home, recalling how he had formerly shouted about “Adam-ah!” and “Eve-ah!” in church, and marvelling that he had never worked himself into a fit, or broken a bloodvessel.
So between what Abner and Hurley said on the farm, and what was proclaimed at the Corners, it was pretty hard to figure out whether the war was going to stop, or go on much worse than ever.
Things were still in this doubtful state, when election Tuesday came round. I had not known or thought about it, until at the breakfast-table Abner said that he guessed he and Hurley would go down and vote before dinner. He had some days before.
He comes before me as I write—this thin form secured a package of ballots from the organization of his party at Octavius, and these he now took from one of the bookcase drawers, and divided between himself and Hurley.
“They won’t be much use, I dessay, peddlin’ ’em at the polls,” he said, with a grim momentary smile, “but, by the Eternal, we’ll vote ’em!”
“As many of ’em as they’ll be allowin’ us,” added Hurley, in chuckling qualification.