Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction

by Thomas Nelson Page

The policy laid down by Nicholas Ash, even after his caution from Leech and Still, was bad enough. “They say the taxes are too high,” declared the negro statesman. “I tell you, and Colonel Leech tells you, they ain’t high enough, and when he’s Governor they’ll be higher yet. We are goin’ to raise ’em—yes, we are goin’ to raise ’em till we bankrupt ’em every one, and then the land will go to the ones as ought to have it, and if anybody interferes with you, you’ve got guns and you know how to use ’em.” Tumultuous applause greeted this exposition of Leech’s principles. Only the earnest counsel of Dr. Cary and some of the older and cooler heads kept the younger men quiet. But the day passed off quietly. The only exception was an altercation between Captain McRaffle and a negro. Leech’s name had been suggested for the Governorship, and had taken well. So he was satisfied. That night the negroes paraded in companies through the village, keeping step to a sort of chant about raising taxes and getting the lands and driving out the whites.

As Dr. Cary rode home that evening on his old horse, Still and Leech passed him in a new buggy drawn by a pair of fine horses which young Dr. Still had just got. Both men spoke to Dr. Cary, but the Doctor had turned his head away so as not to see them. It was the nearest his heart would let him come to cutting a man direct.

Next night after dark there was a meeting, at which were present nearly all the men whose names have appeared in this chronicle, except Dr. Cary and one or two of the older gentlemen, and a number more besides.

The place selected for the meeting was the old hospital, a rambling, stone house with wings, and extensive cellars under it. It was in a cleft between two hills, surrounded by a dense grove, which made it at all times somewhat gloomy. It had been used as a field-hospital in a battle fought near by, and on this account had always borne a bad name among the negroes, who told grewsome tales of the legs and arms hacked off there and flung out of the windows, and of the ghostly scenes enacted there now after nightfall, and gave it a wide berth.

After the war, a cyclone had blown down or twisted off many of the trees around the mansion, and had taken the roof off a part of the building and blown in one of the wings, killing several of the persons who then occupied it, which casualty the superstition of the negroes readily set down to avenging wrath. The rest of the house had stood the storm; but since that time the building had never been repaired and had sunk into a state of mournful dilapidation, and few negroes in the county could have been induced to go there even in daylight. The fields had sprung up in dense pines, and the roads leading out to the highways had grown up and were now hardly distinguishable. It had escaped even the rapacious clutch of Land Commissioner Still.

The night after the speaking at the court-house there was a meeting of ghostly riders at this old place, which had any of the negroes around seen, they would have had some grounds for thinking the tales told of the dead coming back from their graves true.

Pickets, with men and horses heavily shrouded, were posted at every outlet from the plantation, and the riders rode for some distance in the beds of streams, so that when the hoof-tracks reached certain points, they seemed suddenly to disappear from the earth.

Rumors had already come from other sections of a new force that had arisen, a force composed of ghostly night-riders. It was known as the “Invisible Empire,” and the negroes had already been in a tremor of subdued excitement; but up to this time this county had been so quiet, and Leech had been so supreme, that they had not taken in that the Ku Klux might reach there.

After the muster of Leech’s militia at the county seat the companies had been dismissed and the members had straggled to their homes, taking with them their arms and accoutrements, with all the pride and pomp of newly decorated children. But their triumph was short-lived.

In the dead of night, when the cabins and settlements were wrapped in slumber, came a visitation, passing through the county from settlement to settlement and from cabin to cabin, in silence, but with a thoroughness that showed the most perfect organization. When morning dawned every gun and every round of ammunition which had been issued throughout the county, except those at the county seat, and some few score that had been conveyed to other places than the homes of the men who had them, had been taken away.