"As he trod the shaky platform,
With the sweat upon his brow."
About a thousand persons were already assembled on the ground, and a more motley gathering I never witnessed. All sorts of costumes and all classes of people were there; but the genuine back-woods corn-crackers composed the majority of the assemblage. As might be expected much the larger portion of the audience were men, still I saw some women and not a few children; many of the country people having taken advantage of the occasion to give their families a holiday. Some occupied benches in front of the stand, though a larger number were seated around in groups, within hearing of the speaker, but paying very little attention to what he was saying. A few were whittling—a few pitching quoits, or playing leap-frog, and quite a number were having a quiet game of whist, euchre or "seven-up."
The speaker was a well-dressed, gentlemanly-looking man and a tolerably good orator. He seemed accustomed to addressing a jury, for he displayed all the adroitness in handling his subject, and in appealing to the prejudices of his hearers, that we see in successful special pleaders. But he overshot his mark. To nine out of ten of his audience, his words and similes, though correct, and sometimes beautiful, were as unintelligible as the dead languages. He advocated immediate, unconditional secession; and I thought from the applause which met his remarks, whenever he seemed to make himself understood, that the large majority of those present were of the same way of thinking.
He was succeeded by a heavy-browed, middle-aged man, slightly bent, and with hair a little turned to gray, but still hale, athletic, and in the prime and vigor of manhood. His pantaloons and waistcoat were of the common homespun, and he used, now and then, a word of the country dialect, but as a stump-speaker he was infinitely superior to the more polished orator who had preceded him.
He, too, advocated secession, as a right and a duty—separation, now and forever, from the dirt-eating, money-loving Yankees, who, he was ashamed to say, had the same ancestry, and worshipped the same God, as himself. He took the bold ground that slavery is a curse to both the black and the white, but that it was forced upon this generation before its birth, by these same greedy, grasping Yankees, who would sell not only the bones and sinews of their fellow men, but—worse than that—their own souls, for gold. It was forced upon them without their consent, and now that it had become interwoven with all their social life, and was a necessity of their very existence, the hypocritical Yankees would take it from them, because, forsooth, it is a sin and a wrong—as if they had to bear its responsibility, or the South could not settle its own affairs with its Maker!
"Slavery is now," he continued, "indispensable to us. Without it, cotton, rice, and sugar will cease to grow, and the South will starve. What if it works abuses? What if the black, at times, is overburdened, and his wife and daughters debauched? Man is not perfect anywhere—there are wrongs in every society. It is for each one to give his account, in such matters, to his God. But in this are we worse than they? Are there not abuses in society at the North? Are not their laborers overworked? While sin here hides itself under cover of the night, does it not there stalk abroad at noon-day? If the wives and daughters of blacks are debauched here, are not the wives and daughters of whites debauched there? and will not a Yankee barter away the chastity of his own mother for a dirty dollar? Who fill our brothels? Yankee women! Who load our penitentiaries, crowd our whipping-posts, debauch our slaves, and cheat and defraud us all? Yankee men! And I say unto you, fellow-citizens," and here the speaker's form seemed to dilate with the wild enthusiasm which possessed him, "'come out from among them; be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing,' and thus saith the Lord God of Hosts, who will guide you, and lead you, if need be, to battle and to victory!"
A perfect storm of applause followed. The assemblage rose, and one long, wild shout rent the old woods, and made the tall trees tremble. It was some minutes before the uproar subsided; when it did, a voice near the speaker's stand called out, "Andy Jones!" The call was at once echoed by another voice, and soon a general shout for "Andy!" "Union Andy!" "Bully Andy!" went up from the same crowd which a moment before had so wildly applauded the secession speaker.
Andy rose from where he was seated beside me, and quietly ascended the steps of the platform. Removing his hat, and passing to his mouth a huge quid of tobacco from a tin box in his pantaloons-pocket, he made several rapid strides up and down the speaker's stand, and then turned squarely to the audience.
The reader has noticed a tiger pacing up and down in his cage, with his eyes riveted on the human faces before him. He has observed how he will single out some individual, and finally stopping short in his rounds, turn on him with a look of such intense ferocity as makes a man's blood stand still, and his very breath come thick and hard, as he momentarily expects the beast will tear away the bars of the cage and leap forth on the obnoxious person. Now, Andy's fine, open, manly face had nothing of the tiger in it, but, for a moment, I could not divest myself of the impression, as he halted in his walk up and down the stage, and turned full and square on the previous speaker—who had taken a seat among the audience near me—that he was about to spring upon him. Riveting his eye on the man's face, he at last slowly said:
"A man stands har and quotes Scriptur agin his feller man, and forgets that 'God made of one blood all nations that dwell on the face of the 'arth.' A man stands har and calls his brother a thief, and his mother a harlot, and axes us to go his doctrin's! I don't mean his brother in the Scriptur sense, nor his mother in a fig'rative sense, but I mean the brother of his own blood, and the mother that bore him; for he, gentlemen (and he pointed his finger directly at the recent speaker, while his words came slow and heavy with intense scorn), he is a Yankee! And now, I say, gentlemen, d—n sech doctrin's; d——n sech principles, and d——n the man that's got a soul so black as to utter 'em!"