“Ah! there’s the tragedy,” passionately cried the Preacher. “You younger men are growing careless and indifferent to this terrible problem. It’s the one unsolved and unsolvable riddle of the coming century. Can you build, in a Democracy, a nation inside a nation of two hostile races? We must do this or become mulatto, and that is death. Every inch in the approach of these races across the barriers that separate them is a movement toward death. You cannot seek the Negro vote without asking him to your home sooner or later. If you ask him to your house, he will break bread with you at last. And if you seat him at your table, he has the right to ask your daughter’s hand in marriage.”
“It seems to me a far cry to that. But I see the political crisis. What is your plan?”
“This,—organise the young Democracy in every township in the state, and put yourself at its head, control the primaries and down the old crowd. They’ve got to follow you. Fight the campaign with the desperation of despair. If you are defeated, God have mercy on us, but you will be ready for the next battle.”
“I ’ll do it,” said Gaston with emphasis.
“Then I want you to go on a mission to Col. Duke, the President of the National Farmer’s Alliance. He’s a good Baptist. He means well, but he’s crazy. He dreams of the Presidency when he has established the Sub-Treasury for the farmers. He’s afraid of the Negro, and is nervous about using him. He knows I am the most influential Baptist preacher in the state. Tell him I say you will win, and that we will give him the nomination for Governor, and put him in line for the Presidency.”
“When shall I go to see him?”
“Immediately. Get ready to-night.”
The next week McLeod was seated in his office at Hambright receiving reports from his political henchmen at Raleigh.
“I tell you, McLeod, there’s a hitch. Something’s dropped. Duke’s as coy as a maid of sixteen. He says no decision can be made now until he submits a lot of rot to all the lodges of the Alliance and the ‘Referendum’ decides these points. You’d better get hold of him and comb the kinks out of him quick.”
McLeod’s eyes flashed with anger, as he twisted the points of his red moustache.