Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction

by Thomas Nelson Page

Without wasting time or repining about the past, Dr. Cary and General Legaie and the other men began to pick up such of the tangled and broken threads of the old life as could be found, and to form with them the new. They mended the worn vehicles, patched up the old harness and gear, broke their war-horses to drive, and set in to live bravely and cheerfully, in as nearly the old manner as they could. They had, they believed, made the greatest fight on record. They had not only maintained, but had increased, the renown of their race for military achievement—the reputation which they most highly valued. They had been overwhelmed, not whipped; cast down, but not destroyed. They still had the old spirit, the unconquerable spirit of their race, and, above all, they had the South.

Dr. Cary determined to use every effort to restore at once the old state of affairs, and, to this end, to offer homes and employment to all his old servants.

Accordingly, he rode down to the county seat one day to have an interview with the officers there. He went alone, because he did not know precisely how he would be received, and, besides, there was by no means general approval of his course among his friends.

He found that the ranking officer, Captain Middleton, had been summoned that morning to the city by Colonel Krafton, the provost in command there. The next in command, however, Lieutenant Thurston, was very civil and obliging to the Doctor, and, on learning of his plans, took steps to further them.

The officer summoned all the negroes who were hanging around the village, to assemble on the court-green, told them of the Doctor’s offer, and, after a short talk to them, ordered all the Doctor’s old servants who were present, and had not secured employment elsewhere, to return home and go to work on the wages he had agreed the Doctor should pay. For, as he said to Middleton when he returned:

“By Gad! Larry, I was not sure whether I was talking to Don Quixote or old Dr. Filgrave—I know he is cousin to them both, for he told me so—he is a cousin to everybody in the United States. And, besides, I was so bored with those niggers hanging around, looking pitiful, and that tall, whispering fellow, Still, who tells about the way he had to act during the war to keep the people from knowing he was on our side, that I would have ordered every nigger in the country to go with the old gentleman if he had wanted them. By the way, he is the father of the girl they say is so devilishly pretty, and he asked after you most particularly. Ah! Larry, I am a diplomat. I have missed my calling.” And, as he looked at his tall, good-looking superior, the little Lieutenant’s eyes twinkled above the bowl of his pipe, which was much the shape of himself.

The engagement to furnish his negroes rations Dr. Cary was enabled to make, because on his arrival at the county seat he had fallen in with Hiram Still, who had offered to lend him a sum of money, which he said he happened to have by him. Hiram had been down to take the oath of allegiance, he told the Doctor.

“I been wonderin’ to myself what I was to do with that money—and what I turned all them Confed notes into gold and greenbacks for,” he said. “Fact is, I thought myself a plum fool for doin’ it; but I says, ‘Well, gold’s gold, whichever way it goes.’ So I either bought land or gold. But’t does look’s if Providence had somethin’ to do with it, sure ’nough. I ain’t got a bit o’ use for it—you can take it and pay me just when it’s convenient.”

Still had never been a favorite with Dr. Cary, though the latter confessed that he could cite on positive ground for his dislike. When he thought of his antipathy at all, he always traced it back to two things—one that Legaie always disliked Still, the other that when Still had his attack of inflammatory rheumatism at the outbreak of the war, the symptoms were such as to baffle the Doctor’s science. “That’s a pretty ground for a reasonable man to found an antipathy on,” reflected the Doctor.

As the Doctor and Hiram rode back together toward home, Still was so bitter in his denunciation of the Federals and of their action touching the negroes, that the Doctor actually felt it his duty to lecture him. They were all one country now, he said, and they should accept the result as determined. But Still said, “Never!” He had only taken the oath of allegiance, he declared, because he had heard he would be arrested unless he did. But he had taken it with a mental reservation. This shocked the Doctor so much that he rebuked him with sternness, on which Still explained that he did not mean exactly that, but that he had heard that if a man took an oath under threats he was absolved from it.