“B——! B——!” shrieked the ungrateful crowd, clapping and stamping as frantically for the new speaker as for him who had labored so long for their amusement. Thereupon, the Honorable Mr. P——, pitching his hat over his eyes, and brandishing his cane, advanced upon his rival.
B——, a much younger and more slender man, quietly stripped up his coat-sleeves, exposing his linen to the elbows, and showing himself prepared for emergencies; whereat the yells became deafening. A few words passed between the rival candidates; after which B—— folded his arms and permitted P—— to make an explanation. It appeared from this that P—— had written to B——, inviting him to become a candidate for Congress. B—— had declined. Then P—— came forward as a candidate; and then B——, changing his mind, said he would be a candidate too. Hence their quarrel.
Calmly, with his sleeves still up, or ready to come up, for P—— was continually advancing upon him with cane lifted and hat set fiercely on his head,—B—— replied, giving his version of the misunderstanding. He admitted that P—— had written him such a letter. “But his suggestion with regard to my becoming a candidate was very feeble, while the intimation which accompanied it, that he meant to run if I didn’t, was very strong; reminding me of the boarder at the hotel-table, who coveted a certain dish of cakes. ‘Here, waiter,’ said he, ‘see if any of the gentlemen will have these cakes, for if they won’t, I will.’ Of course I declined the cakes. But they have been passed to me by others in a very different spirit, and now I mean to have them if I can get them,—with all deference to the appetite of my venerable friend.”
The crowd hooted, shrieked, roared. “Venerable friend” grasped his glass savagely, but, finding it empty, dashed it down again, and sprang to his feet. Desperately puffed, red in the face, once more whirling his cane aloft and knocking his hat over his brows, I thought, if he did not first get a stroke of apoplexy, B—— would this time surely get a stroke of the stick. But B—— grimly stood his ground; and, after glaring at him a moment as if about to burst, P—— muttered, “Go to the devil, then!” buttoned his coat, gave his hat another knock, and stalked out of the house amid a tumult of merriment and derision.
Nearly always, on such occasions, the disputant who loses his temper, loses his cause. B—— now had everything his own way; and a very good speech he made. He was one of those original Union men who had at first opposed secession, but afterwards yielded to the storm that swept over the State. Sent to the Convention to oppose it there, he had ended by voting for it, under instructions from his constituency. He had kept aloof from war and politics during the Rebellion, and could take the test oath; that was no such bitter cup to him. He spoke very feelingly of the return of Virginia to her place in the Union; praised the government for its clemency and moderation, and advocated a forbearing policy towards the freedmen, whom the previous speaker wished to see driven out of the State; seasoning his speech for the vulgar with timely panegyrics on the heroism of the Confederate soldiers.
The election took place a few days later; and I thought it creditable to the good sense of the district that the younger candidate was chosen.
Of the political views of the people, or of the real sentiments of the speakers themselves, not much was to be learned at such a meeting. The heart of the South was boiling with thoughts and emotions which did not come openly to the surface. On the subject of the national debt, for example. Public speakers and public prints were ominously silent about it; and seldom could a discreet citizen be induced to speak of it with any degree of frankness. I was plainly told, however, by a gentleman of Richmond, that the question was often privately discussed, and that the secessionists would never, if they could help it, submit to be taxed to pay the expenses of their own subjugation.
“But how is it proposed to help it?”
“The first step is to resume their place in the Union. Until that is accomplished, they will remain silent on this and some other delicate subjects. They hope gradually to regain their old power in the nation, when they will unite with the Democratic party of the North, and repudiate the debt.”
If I could have been seriously alarmed by such a prospect, what I witnessed at political meetings and elsewhere, would have done much to dispel my apprehensions. I was strongly impressed by this important fact. The old trained politicians,—whom a common interest, slavery, banded together, and whom no consideration of reason or justice could turn from their purpose,—that formidable phalanx had been broken: nearly every man of them had taken an active part in the Rebellion, and could not therefore, without shameful recreancy and voluntary humiliation on the part of the North, be readmitted to the councils of the nation they had attempted to destroy. In their place we may for some years hope to see a very different class of men, whose youth, or modesty, or good fortune, or good sense, before kept them aloof from political life; men new to the Congressional arena, and therefore more susceptible to the regenerating influence of national ideas and institutions.