“Why Brer’ Durham,” urged Eph in an injured voice, “I baptised inter de kingdom over a hundred precious souls las’ year!”
“Yes, but what they needed was not a baptism of water. You negroes need a racial baptism into truth, integrity, virtue, self-restraint, industry, courage, patience, and purity of manhood and womanhood. I used to be hopeful about you, but I’d just as well be frank with you, I’ve given you up. I’ve said the grace of God was sufficient for all problems. I don’t know now. I’m getting older and it grows darker to me. I have come to believe there are some things God Almighty can not do. Can God make a stone so big He can’t lift it? In either event, He is not omnipotent. It looks like He did just that thing when He made the Negro. Leave me out of your calculation, Ephraim.”
“Mus’ gib de nigger time, Preacher!” Eph muttered as he walked slowly away.
When Gaston emerged from the court house, the Preacher joined him and they walked home to the hotel together.
“What did the two farmers on your committee think of the chances of preventing the Alliance from joining the negroes?”
“Not much of them. They say we can’t do anything with them when the test comes, unless we will endorse their scheme of issuing money on corn and pumpkins and potatoes stored in a government barn. If it comes to that, I will not prostitute my intellect by advocating any such measure on the floor of our convention. We stand for one thing at least, the supremacy of Anglo-Saxon civilisation. I had rather be beaten by the negroes and their allies this time on such an issue.”
“But, my boy, if McLeod and his negroes get control of this state for four years, they can so corrupt its laws and its electorate, they may hold it a quarter of a century. We must fight to the last ditch.”
“I draw the line at pumpkin leaves for money,” insisted Gaston.
It was but ten days to the meeting of the Democratic state convention, and they were coming together divided in opinion, and at sea as to their policy, with a united militant Farmers’ Alliance demanding the uprooting of the foundations of the economic world, and a hundred thousand negro voters grinning at this opportunity to strike their white foes, while McLeod stood in the background smiling over the certainty of his triumph.