Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction

by Thomas Nelson Page

Colonel Krafton was the chief authority in that part of the State, and Major Leech, as he was now called, was his representative in the county. And between them they had the enforcement of all the measures that were adopted.

When their hands were deemed strong enough, it was determined to give them the form of popular government.

It was an easy process; for the whites had been disfranchised, and only the negroes and those who had taken the ironclad oath could vote.

At the first election that was held under the new system, the spectacle was a curious one. Krafton was the candidate for governor. Most of the disfranchised whites stayed away, haughtily or sullenly, from the polls, where ballots were cast under a guard of soldiers. But others went to see the strange sight, and to vent their derision on the detested officials who were in charge. Dr. Cary and General Legaie, with most men of their age and stamp, remained at home in haughty, and impotent indignation.

“Why should I go to see my former wagon-driver standing for the seat my grandfather resigned from the United States Senate to take?” asked General Legaie, proudly.

Steve Allen and Andy Stamper, however, and many of the young men were on hand.

Leech and Nicholas Ash were the candidates for the Legislature, and Steve went to the poll where he thought it likely Leech would be. Steve had become a leader among the whites. Both men knew that it was now a fight to the finish between them, and both always acted in full consciousness of the fact. Leech counted on his power, and the force he could always summon to his aid, to hold Steve in check until he should have committed some rashness which would enable him to destroy him. Steve was conscious that Leech was personally afraid of him, and he relied on this fact—taking every occasion to assert himself—as the master of a treacherous animal keeps ever facing him, holding him with the spell of an unflinching eye.

The negroes were led in lines to cast their votes.

It was a notable thing that in all the county there was not an angry word that day between a white man and a negro. Leech, in a letter to Mrs. Welch describing the occasion, declared that the quietness with which the election passed off was due wholly to the presence of the soldiery, and he was very eloquent in his denunciation of the desperadoes who surrounded him, and who were held at bay only by fear of the bayonets about them. But this was not true. The situation was too novel not to be interesting, and there was feeling, but it was suppressed. It was a strange sight, the polls guarded by soldiers; the men who had controlled the country standing by, disfranchised, and the lines of blacks who had just been slaves, and not one in one hundred of whom could read their ballots, voting on questions which were to decide the fate of the State. There were many gibes flung at the new voters by the disfranchised spectators, but they were mainly good-natured.