It is really a subject of regret with the writer to be compelled to state that, notwithstanding the remarkable strength of emphasis employed by this young man, the beautiful consistency of his narrative (its parts we mean), and his apparent desire to anticipate and provide against attacks of this character, that his evidence was discredited in some leading points, if not altogether overthrown, by the testimony of the witness who followed. This was Jerry Stubbs, a mill-boy oracle, and a youth whose antecedents were otherwise good. His first onset was directed against the figures of his predecessor, which were given a very crooked appearance indeed, when placed against the fact that the entire raid—artillery, baggage-wagons, horse, foot, and buttons—had been self-immured in the paternal horse-lot (80 x 100 feet) of the said Stubbs, for the space of from one to twenty minutes, or considerably more, or a great deal less—could not be exact as to time. He had likewise made a critical examination into the equestrian belongings of the raid, and the horses were not black, but white; and finally, he felt morally assured, despite the confident utterances of those who had preceded him, that the raiders were not mounted, but rode in covered ambulances.
When the witness had concluded, there was a general clamor of dissent; a dozen voices were heard attempting to speak at once; and when, by courtesy of the hearers, each had been allotted a chance at the salient features of his narrative, perhaps no one was better convinced than J. S. himself that he had seen none of the occurrences which he had attempted to relate.
Oliver (colored), the miller, was, perhaps, a more reliable witness than any of those who had preceded him, not simply because he had greater experience of men and things, but his opportunities of informing himself on the occasion referred to had been likewise superior. He had not only seen the raiders, but had actually been interviewed by them. He slept in the mill, and during the night had been aroused from his sleep could not tell how, nor exactly when, but did not doubt that the agency was supernatural. Proceeding to the door, he saw what he supposed to be “sperrits,” mounted on what he thought resembled horses, though he afterwards satisfied himself of the fallacy of the latter conclusion. He could not take observations with any degree of system, however, as he was kept busy carrying water from the tank to the “thirsty sperrits,” who had made this call, it thus seems, with a selfish end in view. One of the party, after having replenished his boilers to the tune of a bucketful, loosened his belt and called for more, remarking aside to him, and apparently in extenuation of the act, that it was the first he had quaffed since being condemned to death by fate and the enemy’s bullets at Shiloh.
He confessed to having become somewhat alarmed at this; but when, a moment later, another individual of the party, mistaking him for the mill owner, offered sympathies in view of the fact, as he alleged, that the party had drank the creek in two, at a point a few miles nearer its source, his courage failed him, and here his narrative suddenly breaks off.
This witness was sharply cross-questioned by the attorneys, who had by this time volunteered on both sides of the controversy, but could not be prevailed on to amend or otherwise detract from the material allegations set forth in his examination. Neither would he add anything thereto—a healthy sign which the defence did not fail to appropriate and magnify. One other witness remained to be examined, and while his testimony possessed that trait which shone so conspicuously in the allegations of all those who had preceded him, viz., a tendency to found his own airy fabric on the spot he had rendered untenable for that of his predecessor, it was in the main reliable; and if, as was urged against it, its facts were produced at a late hour, it was altogether attributable to the witness’s modesty, and the fact—which was now elicited for the first time—that, notwithstanding he had been standing on his head (metaphorically) for the opportunity, and his well-known dexterity in wielding syntactical figures of speech, he had been unable to explode his items fast enough to anticipate those who had occupied the time.
This boy, Dick Shuttail (white), age not known to self or parents, had obtained a view of the Kluxes from the airy depths of the family rag-box, situated in the rear garret, and he was, therefore, able to speak with emphasis on certain points which had been barely touched upon by less-favored observers. He testified that the raiders were mounted on elephants or camels; could not distinguish certainly, but his bias led him to say the former, and that these beasts were branded on the side with three corn-droppers (K. K. K.), or, more probably (as suggested by a hearer), one corn-dropper three times. The raiders were veritable spooks, as, in the place where eyes, mouth, and nose should have been roundly visible, the crows had supped, and instead of hair, they were driven to a subterfuge which closely resembled an inferior article of mosquito bar, worn, however, a la pompadour. Their saddle-bags, loaded, most probably, with munitions of war, were borne in front of them, and their uniforms were ornamented not with buttons, but spangles of bright hue and extraordinary size.
He was going on to relate that the horses they rode were neither black nor white, but br——, when he was interrupted by hisses from his audience,—a circumstance which either aided memory, or sharpened his introspective organs, for almost immediately afterwards he hung his head, and, covering by this movement a very sour expression of countenance, retired from view.
To say, notwithstanding, the beautiful start he made, and the high dramatic turn he was giving the events of his narrative up to the fatal moment of collapse, that this witness’s testimony went absolutely for nothing, and that his explanation, tendered at some length and supported by all those texts of mill-boy verity which had been successfully adduced by his rivals respectively, was rejected by an indignant auditory, is to anticipate the reader.
When, at length, the mill-wheel had performed its last revolution, and the mill boys, astride their sacks of flour, dispersed to their homes, it was with the solemn conviction that some great mystery had dawned upon their young lives, to whose after developments they must look for that rational sequel which had thus far been denied them. Hundreds there were in this and other localities of the South who, while they rejected the idea of a Ku-Klux phantom, were equally slow in accepting the current theories which dissociated them and their plans from all preternatural agencies.
In every man’s breast there is more or less of that mysterious element which, under proper conditions of time and place, sees ghosts in shadows, and hears them in the faintest echo. These attributes (if the term be admissible) implanted in the breast of the child at its birth, though weeded with ever so careful a hand during the years of training, still retain some tendril hold, which no process of metaphysics can uproot, and which in the future years send out fruit-bearing branches that make and unmake human destiny. Of the majority of human kind, it may be said that their lives and possible achievements are covered under a great incubus of superstitious thought and feeling. And if, at some late period of existence they take the tide at a favorable turn and struggle up into the pure surroundings of an honest life, the effort frequently comes too late, for they see in this change only some postponed dispensation of luck in their favor, and so are worse bondmen than before.