Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction

by Thomas Nelson Page

In the old stories, the climax used to be considered attained when the young couple became engaged. Like the hero and heroine of the fairy tales of our youth, in that golden land of “Once-upon-a-time,” all that was to be told after they became engaged was that “they married and lived happily ever after.” In the modern stories, however, this seems to be but the beginning of new adventures. Marriage, which used to be the entrance to bliss unending, appears to be now but the “gate of the hundred sorrows;” and the hero and heroine wed only to find that they loved someone else better, and pine to be disunited. They spend the rest of their lives trying to get unmarried. Nothing is so unconventional as to love one’s own husband or wife, and nothing so tame as to live pure and true to one’s vows in spirit as well as in fact.

It must be said, at once, that this is not a story of that kind. The people described in it knew nothing of that sort of existence. Any reader who chooses to go farther in this history must do so with the full knowledge that such is the case, and that the married life of the young couples will be found as archaic and pure as that of our first parents, before modern wisdom discovered that the serpent was more than the devil, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil more than a tree of knowledge. Still, when we have come so far together, it is necessary to go a little farther.

Thus, it must be briefly explained, for the benefit of those who may be interested to know, what became of those whose story they have been following; and such as do not care to read farther, may leave off here and content themselves with knowing that they met, if not the fates they deserved, at least, the fates which life brought, and met them with undaunted hearts.

The temporary adjournment of the prosecution against Captain Allen was but preliminary to a continuance, and, finally, the case was altogether dismissed. The prosecution of Major Welch’s son-in-law was a very different thing from that of a mere citizen of that unhappy section. But the investigation that followed proved triumphantly that Captain Allen’s part in the movements that had taken place had been precisely what he asserted they were, and that he had done much to break up later the organization of night-riders.

Not that this was the end of the troubles in the Red Rock country, and in the section of which it formed a part, or of the struggle that went on between the people of that section and Leech and the other vultures who were preying on them. The talons of those vultures were too firmly imbedded to be easily dislodged. But in time, the last of the harpies was put to flight.

As for Leech, there is record of one of the name who, after holding the leadership of one party in his State, on the overthrow of that party by the outraged white people of the State, soon became a partisan on the victorious side. There is also record of a Leech who, having been during the “carpet-bagger” régime a man of large means and political prominence, was known at last mainly on account of an unsavory story of the manner in which he had tried to get rid of his wife, and marry another woman. Having been frustrated in that design through the efforts of a former political associate, a certain Colonel McRaffle, who attained a temporary celebrity on account of his disclosures before the Commission that investigated the frauds in the State, this Leech, it appears, fell into great want, and was nursed through his last illness by the faithful wife whom he had so ill-treated. Readers may decide for themselves whether either of these was the once supreme “carpet-bagger” dictator of Red Rock—if, indeed, they both were not the same person.

But to narrate all this would lead this history into wholly other lines.

The day after her marriage, Ruth received a deed which had just been recorded, conveying to her the part of Red Rock which Major Welch had bought of Still and restored to Jacquelin, and with the deed a letter from Jacquelin, asking her, as Steve’s wife, to accept it from him and Rupert as a wedding present. The letter said things about Steve over which Ruth shed tears, though her radiant face showed how happy she was.

“Dr. Moses” had a somewhat curious career. Jacquelin’s statement of what he saw the night of the attempted assassination of Middleton cast suspicion on Moses; and he was arrested, and arraigned before a negro magistrate. It was shown that he had made prophecies or threats against Middleton. But Leech appeared as his counsel, and at least twenty witnesses testified to the man’s having been at the Bend all night. So he was at once discharged; and the shooting of Middleton was, in the public press, generally charged to the bands of midnight assassins, to whom it was the custom at that time to attribute all outrages that were committed—at least, where the objects were Northern men. One journal, indeed, alleged that Jacquelin himself was concerned in it, and charged that his crowning infamy was the attempt to place the shooting on “a reputable colored physician in the County—one of the few men whose education had enabled them to enter one of the learned professions.” The prophecies of Moses, however, greatly increased his reputation; his prestige and power became tremendous, and he was, perhaps, the person most feared in the whole County by his own race. Finally, indeed, he became such a dread to them that they rose, and he was run away from the Bend by his own people. Nothing more was heard of him in the County. But some years later, in one of the adjoining States, a negro was hanged by a mob, and an account of it was published in the papers. The press of one side stated that he confessed not only the terrible crime for which he was hanged, but, in addition, several others sufficiently heinous to entitle him to be classed as one of the greatest scoundrels in the world. The other side asserted that he was a physician of standing, who had at one time enjoyed a large practice in another State, from which he had been run out by the bands of masked desperadoes who had terrorized that section. In proof, it declared that “he died calling on all present to meet him in heaven.” As both sides, however, concurred in giving his name as Moses ——, and his former domicile as Red Rock, we have some ground for supposing that “Dr. Moses,” as Andy Stamper said, at last came to the end of his rope.

Did our limits permit, the marriage of several other couples besides Steve and Ruth might be chronicled. But the novelist cannot tell at one time all he knows. Be this known, however, that as some citadels are captured by assault, so others capitulate only after long siege; and this both Jacquelin and Captain Thurston discovered.