While the well-drilled negro regulars, led by white officers acquitted themselves with honour at Santiago, the negro volunteers were the source of riot and disorder wherever they appeared. From the first, it was seen by thoughtful men that the Negro was an impossibility in the newborn unity of national life. When the Anglo-Saxon race was united into one homogeneous mass in the fire of this crisis, the Negro ceased that moment to be a ward of the nation.
A negro regiment had been in camp at Independence during the war and was still there awaiting orders to be mustered out. Its presence had inflamed the passions of both races to the danger point of riot again and again. The negro who was editing their paper at Independence had gone to the length of the utmost license in seeking to influence race antagonism.
When the regiment of which the Hambright company was a member was mustered out at Independence, Gaston was invited to deliver the address of welcome home to the soldiers, and a crowd of five thousand people were present, one-half of whom were negroes.
While Gaston was speaking in the square, a negro trooper passing along the street refused to give an inch of the sidewalk to a young lady and her escort, who met him. He ran into the girl, jostling her roughly, and the young white man knocked him down instantly and beat him to death. The wildest passions of the negro regiment were roused. McLeod was among them that day seeking to increase his popularity and influence in the coming election, and he at once denounced Gaston as the cause of the assault, and urged the leaders in secret to retaliate by putting a bullet through his heart.
The white regiment had been mustered out, and their guns in most cases had been retained by the men. The negro troops were to be mustered out the next day.
Late in the afternoon Gaston had received information that a plot was on foot to kill him that night, when a negro mob would batter down his door on the pretense of searching for the man who had assaulted the trooper. The Colonel of the regiment just disbanded heard it, and that night his men bivouacked in the yard of the hotel and slept on their guns.
A little after twelve o’clock, a mob of five hundred negroes attempted to force their way into the hotel. They met a regiment of bayonets, broke, and fled in wild confusion.
This event was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. In the morning paper a blazing notice in display capitals covered the first page, calling a mass meeting of white citizens at noon in Independence Hall.
The little city of Independence was one of the oldest in the nation. It boasted the first declaration of independence from Great Britain antedating a year the Philadelphia document. The people had never rested tamely under tyranny nor accepted insult.
The McLeod Negro-Farmer Legislature had remodelled the ancient charter of the city, and under the new instrument a combination of negroes and criminal whites had taken possession of every office.