But this base betrayal which had followed the honorable surrender of a brave, heroic army—this wanton humiliation of a ruined people by pot-house politicians—this war on the dead, the wounded, the dying, and their defenseless women—this enthronement of Savagery, Superstition, Cowardice and Brutality in high places where Courage and Honor and Chivalry had ruled—these vandals and camp followers and vultures provoking violence and exciting crime, set to rule a brave people who had risked all for a principle and lost—this was a nightmare; it was the reduction of human society to an absurdity!
For a moment he saw the world red. Anger, fierce and cruel, possessed him. The desire to kill gripped and strangled until he could scarcely breathe.
Nor did it occur to this man for a moment that he could separate his individual life from the life of his people. His paper was gaining in circulation daily. It was paying a good dividend now and would give his loved ones the luxuries he had dreamed for them. The greater the turmoil the greater his profits would be. And yet this idea never once flashed through his mind. His people were of his heart's blood. He had no life apart from them. Their joys were his, their sorrows his, their shame his. This proclamation of a traitor to his race struck him in the face as a direct personal insult. The hot shame of it found his soul.
When the first shock of surprise and indignation had spent itself, he hurried to answer his telegrams. His hand wrote now with the eager, sure touch of a master who knew his business. To every one he sent in substance the same message:
"Submit and await orders."
As he sat writing the fierce denunciation of this act of the Chief Executive of the state, he forgot his bitterness in the thrill of life that meant each day a new adventure. He was living in an age whose simple record must remain more incredible than the tales of the Arabian Nights. And the spell of its stirring call was now upon him.
The drama had its comedy moments, too. He could but laugh at the sorry figures the little puppets cut who were strutting for a day in pomp and splendor. Their end was as sure as the sweep of eternal law. Water could not be made to run up hill by the proclamation of a Governor.
He had made up his mind within an hour to give the Scalawag a return blow that would be more swift and surprising than his own. On the little man's reception of that counter stroke would hang the destiny of his administration and the history of the state for the next generation.
On the day the white military companies surrendered their arms to their negro successors something happened that was not on the programme of the Governor.
The Ku Klux Klan held its second grand parade. It was not merely a dress affair. A swift and silent army of drilled, desperate men, armed and disguised, moved with the precision of clockwork at the command of one mind. At a given hour the armory of every negro military company in the state was broken open and its guns recovered by the white and scarlet cavalry of the "Invisible Empire."