“You are initiating the negroes into the League and teaching them the new catechism?”
“With remarkable success. Its secrecy and ritual appeal to them. Within six months we shall have the whole race under our control almost to a man.”
“Almost to a man?”
“We find some so attached to their former masters that reason is impossible with them. Even threats and the promise of forty acres of land have no influence.”
The old man snorted with contempt.
“If anything could reconcile me to the Satanic Institution it is the character of the wretches who submit to it and kiss the hand that strikes. After all, a slave deserves to be a slave. The man who is mean enough to wear chains ought to wear them. You must teach, teach, TEACH these black hounds to know they are men, not brutes!”
The old man paused a moment, and his restless hands fumbled the cover.
“Your first task, as I told you in the beginning, is to teach every negro to stand erect in the presence of his former master and assert his manhood. Unless he does this, the South will bristle with bayonets in vain. The man who believes he is a dog, is one. The man who believes himself a king, may become one. Stop this snivelling and sneaking round the back doors. I can do nothing, God Almighty can do nothing, for a coward. Fix this as the first law of your own life. Lift up your head! The world is yours. Take it. Beat this into the skulls of your people, if you do it with an axe. Teach them the military drill at once. I’ll see that Washington sends the guns. The state, when under your control, can furnish the powder.”
“It will surprise you to know the thoroughness with which this has been done already by the League,” said Lynch. “The white master believed he could vote the negro as he worked him in the fields during the war. The League, with its blue flaming altar, under the shadows of night, has wrought a miracle. The negro is the enemy of his former master and will be for all time.”
“For the present,” said the old man meditatively, “not a word to a living soul as to my connection with this work. When the time is ripe, I’ll show my hand.”