The scene that followed this triumph! Two stalwart mountain men snatched him from the rostrum and bore him on their shoulders through the shouting, weeping crowd. Women pressed close and kissed his hands, and old men reached forward their hands to touch his garments. Ah! if he could inherit the power of this king among men! To-night as Gaston walked under that tree with his heart beating with the ecstasy of a new-found source of life, he felt that he could do, and that he would do, what the master had done before him!
“Charlie, I’ve heard some startling news since you left home, and I can’t sleep nights thinking about it.”
“You’ve heard of McLeod’s scheme.”
“Exactly. And it means the ruin of this state and the ruin of the South unless it can be defeated.”
“How are you going to do it?”
“It’s a puzzle but it’s got to be done. Half the farmers in the strongholds of Democracy are crazy over their fool Sub-Treasury and a hundred other fakir dreams. McLeod has promised them everything—Sub-Treasury, pumpkin leaves for money,—anything they want if they will join forces with his niggers and carry the state. You are the man to begin now a quiet but thorough organisation of the young men, and oust the fools from control of the party.
“When the white race begin to hobnob with the Negro and seek his favour, they must grant him absolute equality. That means ultimately social as well as political equality. You can’t ask a man to vote for you and kick him down your front doorstep and tell him to come around the back way.”
“I think you exaggerate the social danger, but I see the political end of it.”
“I don’t exaggerate in the least. I am looking into the future. This racial instinct is the ordinance of our life. Lose it and we have no future. One drop of Negro blood makes a negro. It kinks the hair, flattens the nose, thickens the lip, puts out the light of intellect, and lights the fires of brutal passions. The beginning of Negro equality as a vital fact is the beginning of the end of this nation’s life. There is enough negro blood here to make mulatto the whole Republic.”
“Such a danger seems too remote for serious alarm to me,” replied the younger man.