“Let ’em squirm. They’re flat on their backs. We are on top, and we are going to stay on top. I expect to lead a fair white bride into my house before another year and have poor white aristocrats to tend my lawn.” Tim worked his ears and looked up at the ceiling in a dreamy sort of way.
“That’ll be a sight won’t it!” exclaimed Haley with delight. “Where’s that scoundrel Nelse that lived with Mrs. Gaston?”
“Oh, we fixed him,” said Tim. “The black rascal wouldn’t join the League, and wouldn’t vote with his people, and still showed fight after we beat him half to death, so we put a levy of fifty dollars on his cabin, sold him out, and every piece of furniture, and every rag of clothes we could get hold of. He’ll leave the country now, or we’ll kill him next time.”
“You ought to a killed him the first time, and then the job would ha’ been over.”
“Oh, we’ll have the country in good shape in a little while, and don’t you forget it.”
The news of the order of the military commandant of “District No. 2,” comprising the Carolinas, abrogating the decisions of the North Carolina Supreme Court, forbidding the intermarriage of negroes and whites, fell like a bombshell on Campbell county. The people had not believed that the military authorities would dare go to the length of attempting to force social equality.
This order from Charleston was not only explicit, its language was peculiarly emphatic. It apparently commanded intermarriage, and ordered the military to enforce the command at the point of the bayonet.
The feelings of the people were wrought to the pitch of fury. It needed but a word from a daring leader, and a massacre, of every negro, scalawag and carpet-bagger in the county might have followed. The Rev. John Durham was busy day and night seeking to allay excitement and prevent an uprising of the white population.
Along with the announcement of this military order, came the startling news that Simon Legree, whose infamy was known from end to end of the state, was to be the next Governor, and that the Hon. Tim Shelby was a candidate for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Legree was in Washington at the time on a mission to secure a stand of twenty thousand rifles from the Secretary of War, with which to arm the negro troops he was drilling for the approaching election. The grant was made and Legree came back in triumph with his rifles.