The Call of the South

by Robert Lee Durham

The fight was not an open one, with each army aligned under its own banners. It was a night attack where the clash and the struggle could be heard and felt but the assailants could not be distinguished and called by name. Mr. Phillips could well imagine who were the leaders of his enemies, but they were too shrewd as yet to openly declare their opposition.

The consummate skill with which the campaign was conducted made it appear that there was a growing manifestation of the people's disapproval. The boomlets of a dozen or more favourite sons were assiduously cultivated each in its limited field—but all by the master hand. The favourite sons as a rule deprecated the mention of their names and waived it aside as unworthy of serious thought; but it takes a very great or a very small man to recognize his own unfitness for the presidency of the nation,—and modesty would permit no favourite son to say he was too big for the office.

Mr. Phillips was not of the holy sort that is above using some of the traditional methods of the politician. With good conscience he could drive men to righteousness when necessity demanded it: and believing that his own re-election would be for the country's weal he would not have hesitated perhaps to turn the power of the administration to that purpose if he had not been measurably handicapped.

He was an honest man—as his predecessors in office had been. He desired—as they had desired before him—to give the country a clean and honest lot of officials to administer its interests. But, unlike some of the Presidents gone before, he had made extraordinary personal efforts to see and know for himself that the men of the government corps were of honest purposes at heart and honest practices in office. Result: many and many a cog-wheel, great and small, in the machine had been broken and thrown into the scrap pile.

Therefore the machine silently prayed for deliverance from this Militant Honesty in the executive office, and, with its praying, believed—first article in the creed of Graft: Heaven helps those who help themselves—to deliverance as well as to the public money. So, there was no pernicious activity in Mr. Phillips' behalf among the office-holding class. The defection from his support was impalpable but none the less assured. He could not put his finger upon the men and say "Here are the deserters," for they had not as yet, at four months before the convention, declared against him. But they were not throwing up their hats for him. It was apathy that presaged disaster.

And Greed had so quietly and effectively extended its propaganda that "vested" interests began to think they "viewed with alarm" Mr. Phillips' activities. They were persuaded that he had already gone to the limit in bringing to book the methods of Capital and of Business, and were asked to note that not even yet was there the faintest hint of a promise that he would not run amuck amongst them. They preferred to defeat him in the convention. If not, they would defeat him at the polls. With them there was no sentiment about it. They simply wanted no more of him. They desired a "safe" man.... Few times in the political history of this nation has Money failed to get what it really truly wanted.

Finished politician that he was, Mr. Phillips could read the signs clear. He knew that his political death was being plotted, had been plotted for months. In the consciousness of his official rectitude and efficiency, and with confidence in the discernment and appreciation of his countrymen, for a long time he had thought contemptuously of the plotters. At length, however, his trained eye had caught the flash of real danger: and his heart was oppressed. Not that overweening ambition made him crave continuance in his exalted office and sicken at the thought of denial. It was not that: not the loss of a double meed of honour in a second term. No; it was the threatened loss of his first term, of the four years already gone, with their unstinted expenditure of energy and honest purpose, brain-fag and strain of heart. To be disapproved, discredited, by the people for whom he had given the very essence of his life! Keener than the sting of ingratitude, even, was the sense of possible loss. Four years for naught! four years for naught!—if the people should repudiate him. He trembled to think it was possible for him to fail of renomination. He was fighting for his life: for the life he had already given to his country in that four years.

As the weeks and months wore on toward summer he felt that he was losing strength with every sunset. The Southern delegations, makers of so many second terms, were being sent to the national convention uninstructed. That was not conclusive; but it was ominous, for any administration having Mr. Phillips' political faith that cannot hold the delegations from that section is politically in a bad way.

Plausible explanations were offered, assuredly: "Southern delegates have so regularly worn the administration label that they have lost influence and self-respect"—"This time it is unnecessary. There is only one real candidate and they must all vote for him"—"It is better not to appear to endorse the negro luncheon too vigorously, for the negro in the South does not count any more and some of the tenderfoot white recruits might desert." The explanations did appear to explain it; but Mr. Phillips knew that Money and the Machine were taking his Southern delegates from him.

And the Southern delegates were not the only ones that were going wrong. The Trusts and the Grafters were throwing Northern and Western delegations into confusion. Beyond that, the Southern country was somewhat surprised to hear that a negro son-in-law to the Presidency was a little too strong even for Northern stomachs, and that some Northern white folks were making bold to say so.