TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.

“Ham Sterns, I reckon you know ME.”— Page [190].

OTHER FOOLS
AND THEIR DOINGS,

OR,

LIFE AMONG THE FREEDMEN.

BY ONE WHO HAS SEEN IT.

NEW YORK:

J. S. OGILVIE & COMPANY,

29 Rose Street.

Copyright
1880.
By J. S. OGILVIE & CO.

CONTENTS.

OTHER FOOLS
AND THEIR DOINGS.

CHAPTER I.
THE BEAN ISLAND PEOPLE.

“O Tam! hadst thou but been sae wise
As ta’en thy ain wife Kate’s advice!”

—Tam O’Shanter.

It was April, 1876, and Deacon Atwood and Captain Black were riding along the sandy highway in the sparsely settled vicinity of Bean Island, in the State of South Carolina.

Though the sun shone uncomfortably hot, neither the men nor the horses they bestrode seemed anxious to escape its rays, for they traveled quite leisurely several miles, till they reached a point where the road forked.

There they paused a few moments, and continued their conversation in the same low, earnest tones they had previously employed.

The Deacon was fifty years of age, large, broad-chested, red-faced, with full fiery red beard and thin brown hair, which gathered in sodden, tapering hanks about his short neck and large ears; and his pale-blue eyes looked out of little triangular orifices on either side of a pyramidal nose, upon the apex of which was balanced a narrow forehead of a “quirked ogee” pattern. His hands were large and freckled, and he kept them in constant motion, like his huge feet, which seemed even too heavy for his clumsy legs. His snuff-colored suit, and the slouched hat he wore on the back part of his head, were dusty with travel.

His companion was younger, taller, and less stoutly built than he. His eyes were large and dark, and his head, crowned with bushy black hair, was poised upon a long, slim neck. His manners indicated more culture than the Deacon had received.

“Well, Deacon,” said he, rising in his stirrups, “we have submitted long enough, and too long, and there must be a change: and I am bound to do my share to secure it.”

“And I won’t be behind yo’, Cap’n,” replied Deacon Atwood. “These niggers must be put down where they belong, and the carpet-baggers driven back where they came from.”

“It’s doubtful whether many of them would be received there. I apprehend that the most of them “left their country for their country’s good” when they came here. A man don’t emigrate for nothing, and I expect they have been run out of the North for some mean acts, and have come to the South to prey upon a conquered people.”

“I reckon that’s so, and I wonder how yo’ men that ’a’n’t no church obligations on yo’ ken keep from swearing when yo’ think of it. I declar, when I get to turning it over in my mind I get so mad that I can’t hardly keep from it myself. As yo’ war saying, it reaches everywhere. Less than half the people is white to be sure, but then we own nine-tenths o’ the land, and yet we must be taxed to support nigger schools, and niggers and carpet-baggers in all the offices, and new offices trumped up where there a’n’t enough to serve them as wants ’em—health officers in every little town, and scavengers even, under pretense of fear of yellow fever, to give salaries to dumb niggers as don’t know nothing only how to rob Southern gentlemen, and all sorts of yankee “public improvements” as they call ’em! Why, I’m taxed this year to mend a road that runs down past me there, and nobody but niggers never travels on it. It is positively insulting and oppressive!”

“Well, Deacon, I suppose your statement that niggers and carpet-baggers are in all the offices might be called a slight exaggeration, but then we could sit here till dark and not finish enumerating the grievances this State government, backed by that Cæsar Grant, at Washington, imposes upon the people of South Carolina—those that ought to be the ruling class—the South Carolinians.

“But the best thing we can do is to take hold of these military clubs and work them; and in that way bring about a better state of things. I, for one, am determined this State shall go Democratic this coming fall; and if we unite in this method I’ve been explaining to you, we can effect it. Just bring this Mississippi method up in your club to-night—or support Lamb, if he does—and we’ll whip the rascals. Nigger voters are too thick—must be weeded out!”

“That’s just what I’m going to do,” replied Deacon Atwood; “and in order to do it, I reckon we’ll have to go on.”

“Yes; my sabre club meets this evening, too, for drill. So good evening!”

“Good evening, Captain.” And the two men separated. The Captain kept the main road, and the Deacon took a sort of back, plantation route, seldom traveled except by the farmers residing upon it, where he soon fell into deep meditation, his chin dropping upon his breast, and his respiration becoming slow and heavy. His old white horse, even, seeming to pass into a similar state of somnambulency, walked dreamily along, till his nose, far down towards the ground, came in contact with a fresh and tender shrub, around which his long tongue instinctively wrapped itself, and he came to a full stop.

“Hud up!” said the startled Deacon, gathering up his bridle with a nervous jerk; and his small eyes quickly swept a circle around him.

With something like a shudder and an audible sigh of relief, he composed himself again, for only a quiet landscape had met his vision.

A swampy forest was on his left hand, and long stretches of scrub palmettos, interspersed with cotton-patches, on his right.

Seeing two colored men at work in one of the latter, and probably feeling a need of human companionship, he rode up to the crooked rail fence, and shouted “Howdy?”

“Why, howdy? Deacon, howdy?” was the friendly response, as one of the men laid down his heavy cotton hoe, and approached the fence.

“How is work, January?” asked Deacon Atwood, pleasantly.

“I gets along mighty well, I thank yo’. I hope yo’ do,” said the freedman, who, though about the age of his neighbor, was too much accustomed to being addressed as a boy, and by his Christian name, to take offense at the familiarity.

“Well, I’ll be blamed if yo’ niggers don’t get along better’n the white folks! These confounded carpet-baggers are larnin’ yo’ how to fleece us that owns the land, and blowed if yo’ ain’t doing it!”

“Why, Deacon, I don’t know what yo’ mean. I ha’n’t been fleecing nobody, I’m shor’. If God Almighty gives me my freedom, and gives me strength to work what land I’m able, and makes the crops grow, why ha’n’t I a right to get ’long? I can’t see who’s hurt, not to my serious knowledge?”

“It a’n’t yo’r working, it’s yo’r voting. Yo’ vote them villains into office, and they’re bleeding the country to death with taxes. Now, we a’n’t gwine to stand it. All the gentleman has agreed together that yo’ve got to come over to our side. It’s for yo’r interest to be thar.”

“Can’t do it, nohow, Deacon,” replied the negro, smiling good-humoredly.

“If yo’ don’t there’ll lots of yo’ be killed,” said Deacon A., kindling.

“Now, Deacon Atwood,” said January Kelly, deliberately, “I think a parcel of gentleman that was raised and been college-bred, men that would undertake to ride over things by killing out a few niggers—well, I think its a very small idea for an educated man. I think they must have lost all conscience of heart; I think all conscience of heart are gone when they come to do that, I do; but you a’n’t in earnest, Deacon? You’re a Christian man. I ha’nt got no neighbors as would hurt me. I’m a honest man as works hard, and minds my own business, and takes care o’ my family; and nobody ain’t gwoine to kill me, nohow.”

“Oh, no, January; nobody won’t hurt honest, hard-working darkies like you, if they let politics alone; but then there’ll be lots of the leaders be killed, ’fo’ election, if just such men as yo’ don’t come over and help us save the State,” said the Deacon.

“Why the State is all here. I don’t see as it’s lost, nor gwoine to smash, either; and if we have a Government we’ve got to have leaders. If all the men stayed to home and worked land like I do, there wouldn’t be no Government.”

“So much the better,” snapped the Deacon. “The strong could take care of themselves and look out for the weak ones too.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. The rogues would steal and kill all the same, and who’d take care of our lives and our property, and collect the taxes, and build the bridges the war burned down, and the school-houses, and pay the teachers, and all them things?”

“There is too many of them now; and South Carolinians shall rule South Carolina!” broke forth Deacon Atwood, with great vehemence; “and I want you to come over to the democratic party where you won’t get hurt. We’ll all help you if you will.”

“Why Deacon, I thought yo’ was just saying we is getting along the best. I was born in South Car’lina, an’ so was mos’ all the collud people in the State to-day, and ain’t we South Carolinians then? Now all I has got to say is, that it’s a mighty mean man as won’t stand to his own. It war the ’publican party as made me a free man, an’ I reckon I shall vote ’publican long as I breaves! That is all I can say, Deacon. I don’t know no mo’.”

“Hud up!” said the Deacon, and he rode abruptly away.

“What on earth has come over Deacon Atwood, I wonder,” said Mr. Kelley, to a tall, muscular black man, who, swinging his hoe lazily, had at length planted his row abreast with the spot where his employer had dropped his when the Deacon saluted him.

“Talking ’bout politics, I reckon!” was the drawling reply.

“Yes, and he did make some awful threats! Why, Pompey, he said they’d lots of the niggers ’round here get killed ’fo’ election if we didn’t come ovah to the democratic party! Now I’ve hearn that kind o’ talk ever since reconstruction, but I never did, myself, hear the Deacon, nor no such ’spectable and ’ligious men talk it ’fo’; though they say they did talk it, an’ gone done it, too, in some places. He says it’s a general thing now, from shor’ to shor’ this time ’mong the gem’men. He says the taxes is ruining the country, an’ niggers an’ carpet-baggers is in all the offices, an’ the money is wasted, an’ there’s got to be a change.”

“Oh, —— —— him! It’s just the odder way about—shutting up offices—doing away wid ’em, an’ turning de niggahs out to make room for old confederate soldiers! I hearn Kanrasp, an’ Striker, an’ Rathburn, an’ some o’ them big fellahs talkin’ ’bout it dar in Aiken.”

(Pompey had boarded in a certain public institution at the county seat for the greater safety of the contents of market-wagons in the town where he resided.)

“The land mos’ all b’longs to the white folks, sho nuff, an’ the rent is so awful high that a nigger has got to work hisself an’ his family mos’ to death to keep from gittin’ inter debt to de boss, let alone a decent livin’, an’ now the gem’men is bound to resist the taxes fo’ the schools, so our chillun can’t have no schools. I thinks it’s toughest on our side!” said Kelley.

“Kanrasp said de Governor is doin’ splendid,” continued Pompey, “cuttin’ down expenses so dey is a gwoine to save a million an’ seventeen hundred an’ nineteen thousand dollars an’ mo’ in one year; or he did save it last year.”

(Pompey had a memory for numbers, though neither gift nor training for mathematical calculations.)

“Striker, he was mad cause de Governor made ’em put down an’ print just ebberyting wouldn’t let ’em buy no “sundies” or somethings—I do’nt know. De white folks wouldn’t let de niggers have no money in old slave times, an’ now dis Governor Chamberlain dat ’tends to be a ’publican, he makes de nigger an’ de Legislature men as come from de North be mighty careful dey don’t get no cent o’ de white folk’s taxes ’thout printing jes’what it’s all boughtened.”

“Well, now, that’s right and honest like,” replied Kelly, “‘cause they’ve been thieves don’t make it right for us to steal; and then the niggers pays taxes, too, and don’t ort to be cheated neither; and I’d like to know if them ways don’t make the taxes easier? They do say they was a mighty sight o’ stealin’ from the treasury going on thar in Columbya a while ago. I reckon Governer Chamberlain is a honest man, and don’t steal hisself neither.”

“Certainly, de taxes is easier. Lawyer Crafty, dar in Aiken—he’s a democrat too, you know—he joined in de talk some, and he said it is easier’n it was; fo’ de taxes used to be thirteen or sixteen mills on a dollar (if yo’ know what dat means), but now it is only eleven.”

“I don’t prezackly understood it,” said Kelly, “but I know eleven ain’t so much as thirteen nor sixteen; and I do reckon it makes it easier. I reckon it’s mo’ cause the white folks wants all the money and the offices theirselves, as makes the fuss.”

“Yes,” drawled Pompey, “and dey makes any man a carpet-bagger dat wa’n’t baun in de South, an’ some ’publicans as was. De Governor has been in de State, an’ all he’s got, now ’leven year; Kanrasp said so; an’ Cummings—de head teacher o’ de big school in Columby—de Versity dey calls it—he’s been in de South thirty year an’ mo’; an’ dey calls him a carpet-bagger, too, an’ all his boys; but de boys was baun here. But den dey is ’publicans an’ teaches niggers, too, I wonder is dey any carpet-baggers up North or anywhere?”

“I don’t know, I never did hear tell of ’em; but the No’th beat in the wa’, you know. But ’bout this killin’ niggers; I’m a thinken, the Lo’d knows we has had enough o’ that: but I can’t help thinking,” said Kelly, and the two men entered into a long conversation upon the subject which we will not follow, as our present interest is with Deacon Atwood, who had resumed his way with Kelly’s quaint and expressive phrase “must have lost all conscience of heart,” as his constant and sole companion, for he had not yet “lost all conscience of heart.”

Arrived at home, he ate his evening meal in haste and silence, and immediately set out for the hall where his Rifle Club met, accompanied by his eldest son, who was a minor by a few months.

Mrs. A. shouted after him, admonishing to an early return, as she did “detest these night meetings, anyhow.”

The father and son rode in silence, while the short Southern twilight faded, and night settled upon the picturesque landscape, soft as the brooding wing of peace; and balmy breezes rustled through the gigantic long-leaved pines and mammoth live-oaks, and over fields of sprouting corn and cotton; and the dark soil seemed to sleep calmly and sweetly under the white moonlight and a sprinkling of white sand, which sparkled like snow.

“Watson, my son,” said the Deacon at length.

“Yes, father.”

An ominous silence warned the boy of a weighty communication forthcoming.

“I’d rather yo’d ’a ’staid to home to-night, but as I’d promised yo’ going, it couldn’t be helped. I reckon we’ll have an exciting time, but now as yo’ are a going, try to keep cool. Like enough thar’ll be some things said that better not; but as yo’ll be present, now mind what I say, and keep cool. Try to be careful. Don’t get excited nor be imprudent. It’ll do for us to foller the rest. Just let them take the lead and the responsibility.”

“Well, father,” replied the youth demurely, well knowing that his cautious parent would be the first tinder to take fire and lead any conflagration that might be imminent.

It is not to our purpose to report the doings of that political Rifle Club’s meeting—the stirring speeches of citizens of the State, who forgot that they were also citizens of the Nation against which their treasonable resolutions were moved, discussed, and voted; nor the inflammatory harangues of Deacon Atwood; nor the courageous utterances of one little man of broader intelligence and views than his neighbors, who urged that the coming political campaign be prosecuted in a fair, straightforward, lawful and honest manner, which should command respect everywhere, and convince the hitherto intractable colored voters that their former masters were disposed to accept the situation resultant upon the war, and with their support, reconstruct the politics of the State upon a basis of mutual interests, in place of the antagonism of races which had prevailed ever since the emancipation and enfranchisement of the slaves.

While these discussions relieved over-accumulations of eloquence and over-wrought imaginations, they also disclosed the true state of feeling, and the deep smouldering embers of bitterness that once “fired the Southern heart” to fratricidal war.

Unfortunately, good and calming counsels often gain least by interchange of expression with those of passion, and so it came that young men, and men whose years should have brought them ripe judgment, but did not, shuddered the next morning at the recollection of words they had uttered, and decisions made in that club-room, from which it would be difficult to recede.

Betrayed by his sanguine temperament and his implacable foe—the love of strong drink—Deacon Atwood was one of these.

“It’s a pretty pass when a man at yo’r time of life stays out till two o’clock in the mornin’ drinkin’, and mercy knows what, I do declar!” said Mrs. A. as she met her liege lord at the door of their domicile, “And takin’ his only son out to initiate him, too, and yo’ a church officer.”

“Wh—wh—why didn’t yo’ go to bed, Ja—Ja—Janette, I didn’t ex—ex—expect to find yo’ up.”

“No, I shouldn’t reckon yo’ did, judging by yo’ exes. Making a fool and a beast o’ yo’self, and tempting yo’ son, when we’ve been praying for his conversion so long.”

“Wal Ja—Janette, yo’ ’ort to ha’ prayed for me, too, fo’ I’ve made a ’nough sight mo’ fool o’ myself than Wat has o’ hissen. But I’ve been true to the State,” drawled and stammered the Deacon, with thick and maudlin utterance, “and if I could stand as much w’iskey as some on em, I’d a’ been true to myself also. But who’s been here, Ja—Janette?” Vainly trying to stand erect, and pointing with nerveless finger to an armful of crooked sticks that lay upon the blazing hearth. “Who brung ’em in?”

“It wa’n’t yo’, Deacon Atwood; I might ha’ froze to death walking this house, and nigh fainting with fear, thinking some nigger had outened yo’ smoke fo’ yo’ fo’ allus’ on this earth.” (He was fumbling in his pocket for an old clay pipe he carried there.) “I do believe uncle Jesse and aunt Phebe are the best Christians on this plantation. Yo’r old mother took her toddy, and went to snoring hours ago, thinking nothing o’ what might happen yo’—her only son, who she’s dependent on to manage all her thousand acres o’ land; though gracious knows I wish she’d give yo’ a foot or two of it, without waiting to all eternity fo’ her to die ’fo’ we can call an earthly thing our own. I couldn’t get that story I hearn yo’ telling Den Bardon ’to’ther day, out o’ my head, and I war that scarred I couldn’t go to bed.”

“What story was that?” asked Watson, as he hung his whip and saddle upon a wooden peg in a corner of the kitchen where the trio were.

“Why, about that Texas Jack that is around here, killing niggers and everybody; and he don’t have more ’n a word with a man till he shoots him down. If I had a knowed yo’ was coming home tight, father, I’d a been scarred ’clar to death shor’. A pretty mess yo’ll hev’ in the church now, Deacon Atwood! Elder Titmouse’ll be after yo’ shor.”

“Hi, hi, hi,” laughed the Deacon. “Hic, a-hic, a-hic, hi, hi. No danger o’ that, old gal. He’d have to be after the whole church, and take the lead of the leaviners hisself. He’s the Chaplain o’ the Club, and the d-r-u-n-kest man in town to-night. The old bell-sheep jumped the fence first, and helter skelter! all the flock jumped after him. Hick, a-hic. But who, hic, taken that wood, hic, from the yard, hic, and brung it thar?” demanded the head o’ the house, with changed mood, ominous of a coming domestic storm. “Dina’s gone, and Tom’s gone, and yo’ wouldn’t do it if yo’ froze.”

“Wal, now, I was feeling powerful bad, a-walking the house, and crying and praying mighty hard, and fust I knowed I heard a humming and a singing, and who should come up to the do’ but Aunt Phebe, and Uncle Jesse close behind? They reckoned thar was sickness, and they come to help. Now, I call that Christian, if they be niggers. “Why yo’re freezing,” says Uncle Jess, “and yo’ll git the fever.” So he brung the wood and made the fire, and we all prayed for yo’, a heap mo’n yo’re worth; fo’, as I say, I war a thinking o’ Texas Jack. When we heahed ole Duke whinny they went home, and this minute they’ve blowed their light out.”

“Hi! hi! Old gal, we’ve been making Texas Jacks—setting ’em up all night; and they’ll be thicker ’n bumble bees and yaller jackets ’fo’ ’lection. But they don’t know how to kill nobody but radicals—niggers and carpet-baggers and scalawags.”

“Now, Deacon, if yo’ve been setting up anything agin such men as Jesse and Den, and Penny Loo, I just hope yo’ll git chawed up by yo’re own Jacks?” said this Southern aristocratic female Christian, in great ire.

“No danger o’ Texas Jack’s hurting me. He won’t chaw his own arms,” shouted the Deacon, triumphantly. “I’m fo’ defending the State and the white man’s rights; South Car’linans shall rule South Car’lina,” and he reeled about the room, swinging his limp arms, and shouting, “Hurrah for South Car’lina! Hurrah for the old Pal-met-to State!”

“Come, come father,” said his son, “let me help you to bed. You talk like a crazy man.” With the assistance of Mrs. A., the Deacon was soon where his lips were safely guarded by slumber.

“It is a pity you hadn’t let father join the Good Templers with me, but may be he wouldn’t ha’ stuck to the pledge,” said the boy, sadly, as he bade his mother good night.

Near eleven o’clock the next morning, with nerves unstrung, head sore, and stomach disordered, and altogether in an irritable condition of mind and body, Deacon Atwood sauntered out into one of his mother’s fields, where a large mulatto man was mending a somewhat dilapidated rail-fence. The hands of the farmer, were keeping time to a succession of old plantation “spirituals” which rolled from his capacious chest like the sound of a trumpet.

“O, believer, go ring that be—l—l.”

“Don’t you think I’m gwoine to ring that beautiful bel—l—l?”

“This winter’ll soon be ovah.”

“When the bride-grooms comes.”

“We’ll march through the valley in that field.”

“Yo’ seem to be mighty happy this morning, Jesse,” growled the Deacon.

“Well, Deacon, why shouldn’t I be happy? I’m well, and my wife is well, and my children is well, and we’re all about our business, and the children in school a learning, and God Almighty is saving my soul, and raining his spirit into my soul, and raining this beautiful sunshine down unto the cawn (corn) and the cotton, to make ’em grow, and why shouldn’t I sing? Why, brother Atwood, I feel like I’d like to ring that beautiful bell so loud that all the folks in the worl’’d hear it; a proclaiming that the Lord Jesus’ll save every poor sinnah that’ll let him,” and the dark face shone with the spirit-beams that glowed within.

The Deacon winced under the churchly title of brotherhood, and what he thought a covert reproof, but yielding to the power of a stronger and more rational nature than his own, he did not remark upon it, though fondly imagining that he felt himself vastly the superior.

“It is well enough to be happy if yo’ can, I reckon,” said he, snappishly, “but I don’t feel so. I confess I’m thinking more about politics now-a-days than about religion.”

“That’s no wonder then that yo’ a’n’t happy. It don’t pay to get away from the Laud into politics—brings trouble.”

“Oh, a plague on yo’r preaching! We must attend to politics sometime: we can’t leave it to yo’ niggers all the time. The Democratic Party has got to beat next fall, or we’ll all be ruined together.”

“Of course it is right for you to think about politics,” replied Jesse, “and to talk about politics, and to vote about politics, but you know “what-sa-ever ye do—whether ye eat, or drink, or what-sa-ever ye do, you must be a thinking of the glory of the Laud.”

“We wouldn’t have no trouble in carrying this next election if it wasn’t for these leading radicals,” said the Deacon, in an angry mood, which had not been improved by Uncle Jesse’s reproof. “There is not more than one in a thousand of the niggers that knows how to read and write, but is an office-seeker; but I tell yo’, Jesse, every one of ’em will be killed!”

A silence ensued, during which Deacon Atwood repeatedly thrust his heel into the soft soil, and turning the toe of his boot about, as though crushing some reptile, he made a row of circular depressions along the side of a cotton hill.

Pausing in his work, and pointing at the busy, great foot, Mr. Roome (for that was Uncle Jesse’s name) remarked, with a broad smile, “Deacon Atwood, them is nice looking little places you’re making there, but allow me to tell you that I reckon your wife won’t like the looks o’ that black streak you’r making on the bottom of that leg o’ them light-colored trousers o’ yourn.”

Vexed beyond control that he could not disturb the equanimity of the colored man, the irate Deacon now squared himself about, and, thrusting both his itching fists deep into the pockets of the abused articles of his apparel, he looked fiercely into the face of the negro, saying:

“Maybe you don’t believe me, but it is true, and all settled; and I’ll bet you that Elly and Watta and Kanrasp will be killed before another ’lection, and I can give you the names of twenty more that will be killed, and among them is ‘Old Bald-head’” (the Governor).

A shadow passed quickly across the dusky face, and a set of fine teeth were firmly set together for a moment. But that soon passed, and the face wore its usual expression: “What are you going to do with President Grant and his soldiers?”

“Oh, all the No’th is on our side,” was the prompt response. “And if it a’n’t, we don’t care for Grant nor his soldiers. I carried a gun once, and I can again.”

The farmer had completed his work, and, folding his arms, he now confronted his “Boss,” and spoke slowly and impressively.

“Mind, now, what you’re doing, Deacon, for the United States is mighty strong. You recollect once you had two Presidents here, and it cost a long and bloody war, and the country ha’n’t got over it yet.”

“Yes, sir, but the No’th is on our side now, I tell yo’, and we shall be able to carry our point.”

“May be so, I can’t tell,” said Jesse, dropping his hands by his sides, “but I shall be very sorry to see another war started here, and I didn’t live in the No’th from ’61 to ’67 to come back here and believe that the people there is going to stand by you in killing us off to carry the election. Maybe they’re tired of protecting us, and disgusted with our blunders and our ignorance, but they won’t join you nor nobody, nor uphold nobody in killing us off that way.”

“Well, you’ll see we shall carry this next ’lection if we have to carry it with the musket—if we have to wade through blood to our saddle-girths,” said the Deacon. “And more—this black Militia Company at Baconsville has got to stop drilling; it has got to be broken up. It is too much for southern gentlemen to stand—flaunting their flag and beating their drum right under our noses! It is a general thing with us now from shor’ to shor’, and the law can’t do nothing with so many of us if we do break it up, and we’re going to.”

“Now, just be careful, Mr. Atwood, what you say, and what you do. I a’n’t going to uphold our colored folks in violating no law, and you know I ha’n’t, nor nobody else neither. I believe in law, and I say let’s stick by the law; and,” gathering up his implements of labor, “I suppose you’ll excuse me, for I’ve got to go around to the other side of this oat field, by the woods there, and mend that other gap; that is, if you don’t care to walk around that way.”

The Deacon did not care to walk that way, and so the conversation ended for the time; though the subject was frequently renewed during the subsequent summer months, in the hope of inducing Roome, who was influential among his people, to declare for the white man’s party, but in vain.

A scion of a family that, in the early settlement of the State, had procured a large tract of land at five cents per acre, and had retained much of it through unprolific generations by penuriousness that had been niggardly and cruel in its exactions upon slave labor, Deacon Atwood was coarse and gross in temperament, and had received little culture of any kind. All his patrimony had vanished through the war and its results; for the parsimony of his ancestors had formed no part of his inheritance, and he had pledged all for the Confederate loan.

His aged mother—a violent rebel, and a widow before the war—yet refused to pledge her land to raise funds for what became the “Lost Cause,” and found means to retain possession of one thousand acres of cotton land, for the management of which her son was now acting as her agent. Mrs. Deacon Atwood was what the reader has seen her, and not an ill-selected specimen of the average planters’ wives, who but seldom left the schoolless vicinities of their homes; and as her family had fared no better than her husband’s in the general financial overthrow, they were quite naturally and rapidly drifting towards their affinity—the social stratum called in ante-bellum times, “poor white trash.”

CHAPTER II.
DISTRUST.

“The murky shades o’ care
With starless gloom o’ercast my sullen sky.”

—Burns.

“Walk in, Mr. Roome; walk in. Glad to see you. Have a chair? Well, what is the news from Bean Island and Baconsville?”

“Bad, Mr. Elly, bad!” replied Uncle Jesse, as he seated himself, and took from his hat a huge red cotton pocket-handkerchief, with which he proceeded with great deliberation to wipe his dusky face and bald head.

“I did not know it was so warm out,” said the courteous host. “This office is such a cool place that I come up here Sunday afternoons to be cool and quiet. It is a good place to read.”

“I reckon it is not so warm to most folks. I’m hotter’n I ought to be, I know; but I’m worreted,” said Uncle Jesse, still wiping industriously with both hands at once, and then thrusting the handkerchief into his hat which he had been holding tightly between his knees, he placed it carefully upon the floor beside him, and putting a hand upon either knee, he leaned forward, looked earnestly into Mr. Elly’s face, and with a significant expression, and in a low tone asked, “Is you alone, Mr. Elly?”

“Yes; or, but—well, Mr. Watta is in the back office, but I can close the door”—rising.

“No, no,” said Uncle Jesse, raising both hands deprecatingly. “Ask him in; ask him in. Or, why can’t I go in there?” glancing around at doors and windows.

“Certainly you can,” replied Elly. “Did you want to see Mr. Watta?”

“I reckon so; yes. Well, now, this is what I call providential; and I reckon I wa’n’t fur wrong in coming, if it is Sunday. The folks in No’thern Ohio don’t do no business on Sundays, and money paid Sunday a’n’t paid at all—can be collected over again; but work is driving awfully now. The freshet put the cawn back so for awhile; but it is ketching up now. But I knowed I ought to come.”

Handshakings and preliminaries over, the trio were soon seated around a large writing table—colored men all of them. Both Elly and Watta were tall and slender—the former quite black, and the latter very light—and both had enjoyed the blessing of education at a Northern school established for the benefit of freedmen, and almost sanctified to the race by bearing the name of “Lincoln.”

Jesse Roome’s northern experiences had not been with books, save at evening schools, of which he had eagerly availed himself; but his naturally well-balanced mind and keen powers of observation had not been idle; and sensible ideas of common duties and relations of life in a highly-civilized and enlightened community were his reward.

Elly was a thriving lawyer and ex-member of the State Legislature, where he had been “Speaker of the House,” and, ever with an eye to business, he had already scented a fee in his visitor’s troubled manner and reply.

“You must excuse my abruptness, but I leave on the train for Columbia in half an hour,” said he, “and you and Watta can talk after I am gone. Now, what can I do for you?”

“First of all, I want some money for my services as constable; and second I want to talk about the political situation, and to tell you some things I have heard men say that is interested. Well, how I got to know this thing—”

“What thing?” asked the lawyer. “Why, that Elly and Watta and Kanrasp and some score of other radicals, has got to be killed,” said Uncle Jesse, lowering his voice to a husky whisper.

“Ha! ha! ha?” roared Elly, throwing himself back in his chair, till his head seemed in danger of getting wedged between the chair-back and a bookcase behind him. “Why, Roome, I thought you was a sensible man,” said he, when he had recovered his breath. “The days of the Ku-Klux Klan’s are over, and all done in this State. When we punished two hundred and fifty of the fifteen hundred ‘very respectable gentlemen,’ as they called each other, who were arrested in 1871-’2, the thing was killed out here, you see.”

“No, I don’t see,” said Roome.

“But do you suppose a man really means what he says when he talks like that now-a-days?” and the two threatened men laughed, and wriggled in great apparent merriment, and in true negro fashion, though really quaking with fear.

“I certainly do believe it, Mr. Elly, and Mr. Watta, and I only hope the good Laud will show that I’ve been afeared for you for nothing. The parties was in earnest, and intended it, I’m shor’; and you know I’m not a old woman, nor a baby to be scart for nothing.

“I’ve took the trouble to resk my life to tell yo’ to take care of you’n, and now I’ve done my part. I didn’t tell Watta right there to home, because I reckon as yo’ is a lawyer, Mr. Elly, I’d best tell you first, and see what is best to do for your protection. I taken trouble to do this. But Watta is here now, and I’m done,” said the old man in a grieved tone.

“We are much obliged for your kind intentions, though you needn’t have been so much scared about us.”

“Well, now, let me tell you,” and the farmer proceeded to narrate minutely the incidents and facts with which the reader is already acquainted, and others of similar import.

“Give me names and I’ll put them through in the law, for threats,” said Elly.

“I can’t do that,” said Jesse, folding his arms tightly.

“Why not?”

“Because I live in the woods, and my life wouldn’t be worth anything; and I a’n’t going to tell yo’, though you’ll believe me yet.”

“I believe you now, but I don’t believe you’re a white man.”

“You will yet though, I ha’n’t nothing more to say now, but just mind what I tell you. You is both men that is marked to be killed, because you is leading radicals; so the white folks says they is gwine to kill you and a score more right round here close; I can’t help it, but I’ve done my duty, and you must take car’ of yourselves. It wouldn’t be no use to prosecute this man. It would only make the whole of ’em mad, and worse than ever ’em open a hornet’s nest; but I want to ax you this favor, just remember my life now, as I’ve remembered your’n, and not tell that I told you this.”

“Oh, we won’t tell, and we’re much obliged to you for your good intentions but we don’t scare worth a cent, after all.”

Uncle Jesse left the office, and the other men walked down to the railroad station to meet the through train going north.

“What do you think of the old man’s story?” asked Watta.

“I don’t think much of it. He has maintained such an equivocal attitude that it is hard to tell whose hands he is playing into. He has been on one side and then on the other—with the colored people and then with the whites, till there is no telling where he is now.”

“Elly, you are unfair. That man is just as true as steel; he is solid gold all through. He is with the side that is right, that is all, only he has more courage to speak out than some of us have. I reckon the fact is that the right hasn’t always been the colored side. I’m afraid it hasn’t, though we’ve had so much the worst chance since we’ve had a chance at all, and such an outrageous list of grievances to remember, and to bear, that it isn’t an ordinary man that can look at things fairly here.”

Now, I have a mind to think there is something serious in this matter, and that there will be more and more as election approaches. The white men at Baconsville are awful mad, because our Militia Company has been reorganized lately, and has been preparing for the centennial Fourth of July. One would think they expected to be massacred in their beds; and so they go to work and do things that might make every nigger mad at them. Sensible, isn’t it?

“They are just raving, the white men are, some of them, and they do talk dreadfully. Old man Bob Baker there, gets into a passion whenever he sees us drilling on Market street. He hates to see a nigger he has hunted in the swamps before the war, and his dogs couldn’t catch, or could, practicing the use of arms with a State gun in his hands, and the Union flag over his head. He is like a mad bull, and “the stars and stripes” is the red rag that sets him a roaring and tearing up the ground.”

Here Watta, the speaker, slapped his companion’s shoulder, and both broke into a loud laugh.

“He has got an idea,” he resumed, “that all the roads within five miles of his plantation belong to him, I reckon, by the way he swears whenever he meets or passes the Company. I tell the boys to give the flag an extra spread whenever he is in sight, and we have it out.”

“It is the flag of the Union that you carry, and you are the National Guards of South Carolina, too,” replied Elly.

“Well, it is cutting to the old rebel and slave-hunter!” he continued. His occupation is gone, gone forever; and I don’t suppose he or his trained blood-hounds take kindly to such cheap game as possoms. There is a mighty sight of brag and bluster about these southern whites, though they’ll dodge quick enough at sight of a United States musket with a Yankee behind it. They hav’n’t forgotten their whipping yet.”

“Yes, but they’ll dodge back again just as quick, when the musket and Yankee soldier are withdrawn, and they are fast forgetting the past; and this centennial year and celebration are unwelcome reminders of it which they would like to resent.”

“Well, yes, I reckon so. You see the mention of the rebellion as one of the hard strains which the Union has survived cannot well be avoided, and so the “red rag,” as you call it, is in their faces pretty often if they take a newspaper, or steal the reading of one. There are only five white men, ‘gentlemen,’ who call upon me regularly to get the reading of my papers, free of course, and call me a ‘nigger.’ They don’t take a single paper themselves, nor buy one, nor say ‘thank ye’ for mine; nor always think to ask if I have read it myself.

“Ah, there she comes! right on time;” and Elly closed and pocketed his gold watch, while the train approached the platform.

“You’ll see, Jesse? Please get that name out of him, and I’ll put the rascal through for threats; though I’m not afraid of him. Good day,” and with the grace of a courtier he waved adieu to his friend, as the train moved away.

He was soon comfortably seated, and gazing out at the window. He was very well dressed, in strong contrast with a large majority of his race in the southern States. His tall shining hat lay beside him upon the crimson plush cushion of the seat, leaving his crisp and glossy frizzed hair the only covering of his shapely head.

Among the occupants of the car were many “northerners” returning from winter residences in Florida.

“We talk of the receding foreheads and projecting jaws of the African,” said a lady sitting opposite, in a subdued tone to her masculine companion, “but just imagine those two men with hair and complexions exchanged,” indicating Elly and a man in the seat immediately in front of him, who was in a double sense, a fair specimen of southern “poor white trash.”

“‘Now, deil-ma-care about their jaws,
The senseless, gawky million,’

“As Burns says,

‘I’ll cock my nose aboon them a’,’

“For I’m bound for dear New England, away from this land of rags and dirt, slatterly ways, lazy habits, flowing whiskey and tobacco, narrow brows and wide mouths, and people of all imaginable shades, from ebony to cream-color or white,” replied the gentleman. “If you like to continue studying and comparing these faces, do so; but don’t suggest it to me, for I long to be where the very air is not darkened with—‘nigger, nigger’ and my ears shall rest from the sound of their uncouth voices.”

“Their voices are expressive. You should call out the smooth tones.”

“But I can’t always. I’m sure I can’t forget the night of our arrival at Jacksonville,” he continued, “Thirty, weren’t there fifty black men standing near that train, all barking their loudest for passengers? Yes, you may reprove me, I know these don’t sound like the words of an abolitionist. But I am one, I insist; but if upon oath describing that sound that greeted our arrival in that city, I must say the voices of ‘thirty yelping curs;’ and to pass through among them, with their grabbing for one’s baggage, and those frightful sounds in one’s ears, and the knowledge of the unsettled state of the country—the antagonism between the races—I’d as lief—well, I don’t know what I wouldn’t choose!”

“Yes, but if, when that big-mouthed, two-fisted fellow grabbed your satchel, you, instead of striking him with your cane and umbrella, had looked kindly into his great-rolling eyes, and mildly said you preferred to walk and carry it yourself, I think he would have dropped it as quickly, and more quietly, and been more likely to remember you kindly. I remember quite similar scenes in the North, with Irish hackmen. But we have outgrown them; and so will the South, and the negroes out-grow these scenes; and for me, the more I see these colored faces, the more that is intelligent and agreeable I see in them.”

Elly’s face had been singularly bright and cheerful before over-hearing this colloquy; but then a change came, and presently he leaned out of the window, gazing at a large dilapidated mansion (it could not worthily be called a ruin,) which stood some rods from the railroad.

Many a day he had played about the door of a poor little cabin in its rear, or ran at the bidding of his young mistress as she walked in a small grove the train was just then entering; or had held the bridles for the gentlemen mounting at the door of “the great house,” watching well their movements, least, as is the habit of some men to cut their dogs with their whips and laugh at their yelps and leaps, they should thus enjoy an exhibition of his agility.

Under that great tree, in the edge of yonder cornfield, his mother writhed under the lash, for complaining that her task was too heavy; and obliged to witness the rising of the great welts upon her naked back, his father had snatched the instrument of torture from the hand that wielded it, and on an attempt being made to dispossess him of it, had dealt the overseer a smart blow across the back of his hand.

Then had followed a gathering of “the hands” from that and neighboring plantations, to witness the “maintenance of discipline,” and Elly’s father—a valuable specimen of plantation stock—was made, under the cat o’ nine tails, a physical wreck.

Beside that old decaying cotton-house, now scarcely visible, his oldest sister was once hung up by her hands and severely whipped, because she preferred field labor by the side of the father of her child, who was called her husband, to what was called an easier life—in “the big house after Missus got sick, and was agwoine’ to die.”

Next, the train rattled over a long stretch of spiling though a cane-brake, where were familiar trees, under which Elly had paused for breath, and standing upon their knotted roots, listened to the baying of pursuing blood-hounds; and so vivid was his recollection of this, his first attempt to escape from slavery, that the sick, cringing, trembling feeling returned as he observed the bent canes leaning away from the half-submerged ties of the railroad track; an involuntarily moving of his feet upon the car floor, as if again seeking a footing upon their bent stalks, a semiconsciousness of present circumstances was restored, through which his mind leaped over the terrible capture and chastisement, and he seemed again to hear the sounds of the “Yankee Camp,” and felt the joy of his happy entrance there, a “Contraband of war,” but a chattel slave no longer.

Then came a realization of the inestimable service the “Yankee Governess” had rendered him when she stealthily taught him to read, and spurred his young master’s lazy efforts, by contrasting his acquirements with those of the listening slave boy.

Through that poor beginning, made in weakness and danger on the part of both pupil and teacher, when it was a crime, punishable by imprisonment in the State’s Prison, he had made his way to positions of honor and emolument.

What meekness, humility and honesty must not a man of such experiences possess, if, conning them over, pride did not lift up his heart, resentment make his arm restless, and a sense of robbery long-endured, make his present powerful position seem a providential opportunity for retaliation and self-reimbursement! From an abyss of enforced degradation and ignorance and despair he had emerged into the light and life of personal and political liberty, equality, respectability and honor; and the young master whose opportunities he once so earnestly coveted, and before whose absolute will he was forced to bow, now sued for favors at his hands, and found “none so poor to do him reverence.” Was ever the nobility of human nature put to stronger tests than in these two peoples?

“Good evening, Mr. Elly,” said a broad-browed, florid-faced, red-haired man in the aisle beside him.

“Good evening, Marmor, good evening;” was the hearty response. “Take a seat?” removing his hat to make room.

“I will gladly take the seat, if you will just step out and let me turn over the back of this one in front, so that we can have the use of the two sofas, for my feet are at their old tricks and troubling me a good deal. They are easier when I lay them up. One might as well personate ‘Young America’ in this Centennial year when it makes him more comfortable.”

“Mind you don’t get them too high now,” said Elly, as they seated themselves after the change, and he spread a newspaper upon the cushion before them, to protect it from Marmor’s boot-blacking. “You might share the misfortune of Ike Partington; and if all your brains should run down into your head, what would become of “The Times?” and Elly laughed and wriggled, in strange and silly contrast with his usually dignified manner.

“I don’t furnish brains for “The Times”, said Marmor, “I only publish it. But what is the campaign going to be, do you think?”

“Oh, of course we shall win.”

Marmor kept his eyes fixed upon his middle finger nail, which he was carefully cutting, and did not reply.

Elly scrutinized his face awhile, and then asked, “Don’t you think so?”

“I am not so positive as I wish I was.”

“You don’t think the colored voters of the State are going back on the party that gave them freedom, and the only one that will preserve it for them? They’ll all vote the Republican ticket, of course.”

“Yes, unless they are intimidated.”

“Now, Marmor, I’ve seen a hint—or what I take for one—in your paper; but I hope you don’t really think there will be trouble.”

“I am afraid there will be trouble. Hanson Baker told me the other day that there are fifteen hundred men ready and waiting to come there and break up the Militia Company in Baconsville, and that they are going to do it; and it is a frequent boast among the men—the white Southerners, I mean—that they will carry the election if they have to do it at the point of the bayonet. They can’t do it honestly, that’s shor’; but I’m afraid there will be trouble.”

A pause ensued, after which Marmor resumed. “I’m almost tired of this State, and if my business could be squared up I’d get away; but I shan’t be driven out. I wish the colored people had the spunk to emigrate to some of the idle western land. It is a heap better and richer than this here, by all accounts; and though it might be some colder, it would make them stronger and smarter, and they’d be heaps better off than they are here.”

“There are a great many talking about it, don’t you know—going by colonies? It would be a deal better than going to Africa. I shall go myself if the old Confederates ever get into power here again.”

“See you stick to that, Elly; and, as for me, I reckon I shall have to go by that time, or before. I was born in South Carolina, and shed my blood in defense of her (as I thought then), at Fort Sumter, got wounded there, and I was as good as any of them till I consented to accept a clerical office under a Republican administration; and then the old Confederates persecuted me and my wife, till I found out how it felt to others, and I have seen under what tyranny a man lives here. He dares not think for himself at all. I served under Hampton in the war, before I got my eyes open. Like most of the private soldiers, and plenty of commissioned officers, I was made to believe a lie, or I never would have raised a hand against the National Government in the world. I used to say just this way: If the No’th would only let us manage our State matters ourselves, and would let our slaves alone (you know I owned a few slaves), I didn’t care if the Territories and new States were free. But Lincoln, and Garrison, and Greeley shouldn’t come down here, and take our nigger property away from us; they shouldn’t be emancipated by the United States Government—the slaves shouldn’t. Enough others said the same, and dozens of our speakers said it on the stump and platform, and plenty of the great leaders were right there—consenting by their silence, if not saying the same things, when they knew well enough that these were just the principles of the Republican party—the ‘Unionists’ who elected Lincoln. What did we care for their ‘sympathy for the slaves,’ or their wishes for the ‘constitutional right’ to liberate them, so long as they admitted they hadn’t got it, and we knew they couldn’t get it short of a two-thirds indorsement by the States through a direct vote of the people? There was slave property enough in sixteen of the thirty-four States to make us pretty sure on that score, in addition to the interests of cotton manufacturers and sugar dealers in the No’th who wanted our products and no interruption of business. Then we had the Fugitive Slave Law for the return of our runaways.”

“But you know the Republican idea was that the new States coming in, being all free, they could at last secure the constitutional two-thirds.”

“Yes, at last” said Marmor, derisively, “at the last great day, while slave-owners had each a vote for three out of every five of his slaves without asking their assent. But our hot-headed course hastened emancipation about a hundred years; and now that it is over I’m glad of it, though it did cost an ocean of blood and treasure. Slavery cursed the whites as well as the blacks, and ought to. When I think of all I saw in that war—I got this difficulty in my feet there (moving them with a grimace), and of the horrible sufferings it brought on our people, and how those leading villains knew all the time that they were deceiving us, I can’t think what wouldn’t be too good for them! And when that war was over, and the No’th had us in her hand as helpless as a trapped mouse, she not only spared their lives, but gave everything back to them which they had forfeited; and now you hear them go on about the National Government and the northern people, especially any that come and settle among us and try to develop the resources of the State, in a way that is simply outrageous! You would think the South was the magnanimous patron of the stiff-necked and rebellious No’th. I verily believe the South would have liked the No’th better if it had put its foot upon her after she fell. Conquer your rebellious child or yield to his dictation without demur.

“There are some who know no such thing as equality. Somebody must be the ‘Boss’, in their practice.”

“But republican principles would not allow the government to hold these States as provinces,” remarked lawyer Elly.

“They should have been held as territories,” said Marmor, “consistently or not. My blood is German (my father emigrated from Germany to Charleston when a small boy), but it has got the South Car’lina heat in it. I’m for efficiency.”

“Nineteen-twentieths of what they call carpet-baggers, and make folks believe are just adventurers, are northern men, capitalists generally, who in emigrating did not leave their manhood behind. It matters not how heavy taxes they may pay, nor how long they remain in the State; if they vote the Republican ticket and maintain the principles and practice of equal justice for all men in the State, they are ‘carpet-baggers;’ and if they vote Democratic, according to the will of the confederate whites, though they vote ‘early and often,’ and at points far removed from each other, they escape the opprobious epithet.”

CHAPTER III.
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH.

“Plumes himself in Freedom’s pride
Tyrant stern to all beside.”

—Burns.

On an insignificant little village built on a narrow flat beside the Savannah river, the sun had been pouring his red hot rays all day, with even greater intensity than was usual at that season of the year.

The inhabitants, however, paid little heed to the extreme heat, and only when the sun sank to the western horizon did they leave their fields and workshops and wend their ways homewards.

Two railroad bridges, and another for the public highway, connected this little village with the city of A——, on the opposite side of the river, and in the neighboring State of Georgia.

A long low trestle carried one of those railroad tracks two or three squares or streets back from the stream towards the hills a half-mile away.

Not far from this trestle, on a broad street which ran parallel with and along the brink of the stream, stood a strong, two-story brick building. Its uses had been various; but at the time of which we write it did service as an armory or drill room for Co. A of the Eighteenth Regiment of National Guards of South Carolina; and also as a dwelling for the Captain of the Company, who, having just returned from his day’s work in the city, now sat with his chair tilted back against the post of the open door, tossing his infant and conversing with his wife, who was preparing their evening meal.

It might be mentioned that the parties in this little domestic scene were of African descent.

“Howdy? Cap’n Doc, Howdy?” shouted a negro teamster, driving up to the door with a great dash and rattling of wheels.

“Hello! That yo’, Dan?” replied the Captain, letting the front legs of his chair down upon the floor with a bump that came near unseating him. “Come in, won’t ye?”

“I’m obliged to yo’, but I couldn’t nohow. I just wants, to know what sort of a combustification is we gwoine to hev to-morrow; and when does de militia come out?”

The speaker was evidently “the worse for the drink,” which must account for his forgetfulmess of what he had been well informed of, and he wriggled and giggled as if greatly tickled.

“The militia,” said Captain Doc, “has got to faum (form) and march down to the grounds, when the doings begin, and stand guard; and after the speeches and all is ovah, we shall go through the usual everlutions, accompanied with music and the flag. I’m sorry we didn’t get that shooting-match I tried to have, so we could ha’ got some unifaum; but I shall inspeck yo’s guns and accouterments mighty close, and put yo’ through mighty sharp on the drill.”

“But a nigger that don’t car’ ’nough ’bout the Centennial fo’th o’ July to get to know all ’bout the doings fo’ the third o’ July, don’t ’zerve to be baun free and ekil.”

“Wal, I wa’n’t baun free an’ ekil, an’ I don’t ’speck to be baun free an’ ekil, nuther, but ’fo’ I done gone ovah to ’Gusta wid dis ere load o’ truck, I knowed all ’bout it. But I met dat are magnifishent young gem’man, Tom Bakah, and, oh, laws!” (spreading his horny palms, with fingers extended and rolling his head and eyes from side to side), “‘mose put my eyes out o’ my head! All upsot my idees! His nose turned up, ’pears like six feet high; no, six inches high; and he drove he horse so scrumbunctious like, ’mose upset my little ambulancer,” and Dan turned to his two little rats of donkeys in harness of knotted raw-hides, which resembled old and assorted clothes lines.

The little creatures stood meekly before an indescribable vehicle, a ridiculous cross between a rude hay-rick and a huge crockery-crate on wheels. It was all out of proportion to the little team, whose backs were scarcely as high as the waist-bands of stumpy Dan.

“Tough little fellahs, dese is,” said the teamster, patting them affectionately, “but mighty feared o’ Mars’ Tom, a’n’t yo’,—Eigh, Jack?”

“See dat nigh critter cock his eye now, and wag dat off ear,” continued Dan, winking at Captain Doc, and giggling and wriggling as before.

“Don’t like Mars’ Tom, do yo’, Jack?” again addressing the intelligent donkey, which not only wagged his off ear, but shook his head in a most decided manner, to the great amusement of his owner.

“Oh, Dan, you musn’t mind the antics of that boy Tom,” said a voice behind him; whereupon Dan wriggled and jumped, and whirled about, and bowed himself double, and made grimaces, and giggled and wriggled, and danced a jig; and finally, with another low bow and long scrape of his right foot, he shook hands with the speaker, who was no other than our friend Marmor. “Tom is only just home from school, you know, and of course the man who knew more before he was born than could ever be cudgeled into that knowledge-box of hissen, is nothing to him! Let him alone, and let him swell though, just as big as he can, he’ll bust the quicker, and we’ll find out the quicker how big he really is when the vacuum is gone, and what is left is packed down solid.”

“‘Pears like dis yere young Tom cat tinks he smell a mice, or a niggah he’s huntin,” said Dan, “an’ he’s gwoine fo’ to chaw ’im up mighty quick!” (suiting his gesture to his words by a long sniff, and a quick motion of his jaws.)

Dan’s buffoonery was irresistible, and the half dozen persons who had gathered at the captain’s door manifested their appreciation by hilarious applause.

“‘Pears like I couldn’t leave such ’stinguished comp’ny, nohow,” he continued, “but dey is a panoramia fo’ my vishum which am decomrated by hoe cakes an’ hominy, an’ lasses an’ bacon, an’ sich tings;” and with his hands upon his empty stomach, Dan bowed very low and obsequiously, and mounting his “ambulancer,” gathered up the ragged ends of his raw-hide ribbons, touched Jack with his long green stick, and rattled away, while Captain Doc shouted after him, “Two o’clock, and no tipsy men on parade.”

The queer little turnout, which would have been a spectacle in any part of the northern states, though common enough in the southern, crept slowly up the steep hill in the rear of the village, where buildings of curious and indescribable styles were scattered without order or taste, and few indications of thrift. Stopping on the outskirts of the town, and before a small cabin built of one thickness of rough boards, the vertical cracks between which would nearly receive the fingers of an adult, and the windows of which, without sash or glazing, were closed only by clumsy wooden shutters—the usual style of cabin inhabited by the southern negro—Dan leaped from his vehicle, and entering, sniffed and looked about searchingly, till a tall, angular mulatto woman entered from the back door with an armful of wood.

“Any suppah yet, Mira?”

“No, sah. Yo’ suppah ha’n’t ready yit, but I’s cookin’ it. I’s mighty tired. I’s done done all dat whole big cotton field.”

“Good, chile! good, chile!” said the husband, approaching and attempting to kiss her as she stooped to replenish the open fire.

No sooner had his breath touched her face than she turned, with a stick of wood in one hand, and confronted him, while the smoke and flame leaped out in alarming proximity to her dress.

“See here now, yo’ Dan; yo’ been drinkin’ gin,” fixing her dark eyes reprovingly upon his silly face. “Dat’s de way yo’ been spendin’ yo’ money.”

“Mira Pipsie, yo’s de smartest woman in de whole worl’. Yo’s got ’em zackly, I reckon” (wriggling and curveting about the room and back to her side again). “I nebber boughtened me no finery o’ no kind; no new bonnet, nor nuffin. Yo’ buys what yo’ wants, an’ so does I.”

“Yes; but yo’ comes home an’ wants suppah, an’ it’s de cotton o’ my raisin’ as buys yo’ suppah.”

“Yah! yah! yah! I’s a lucky dog, shor!” and he executed a jig followed by a double shuffle, knocking his heels upon the bare floor with what vigor he could command, and at the same time improvising as follows:

“I’s de smartest little wife
Ebber seen in all yo’ life;
She marks her cotton-bag
Wid a little calico rag,
An’ gits de biggis’ price,
An’ as slick as any mice
She smiles, an’ bows, an’ flies aroun’,
An’ totes her cotton off to town.
Home she comes, an’ O my!
See de new bonnet! Oh, my eye!
Away to church she sing an’ pray,
Hallelujah! look dis way!
Dina Duncan’s in de shade,
Mira beats all on dress parade.
But jes’ see Dina’s bran new shawl!
Can’t heah no mo’ preachin’ af’er all.
Elder, I’m gone nex’ Sunday sho’,
Can’t wear dis here ole shawl o’ mine no mo’!”

Here the song abruptly terminated, for the “smartest little wife,” who was some inches taller than her husband, and by no means slender, took her liege lord by the damp, unstarched collar of his soiled blue shirt, and marching him to the door, seated him upon the step, saying in a low, decided, and well recognized tone, “Now yo’ jes’ set dar, yo’ drunk niggah, yo’, an’ don’t yo’ open dat big red mouf o’ yo’n no mo’ till I git some hominy to fill it up. I don’t want no niggah’s heels scratchin’ roun’ on my flo’. Ef yo’d buy bettah finery ’n dem ole trowsahs, an’ go to church, an’ let whiskey ’lone, yo’ cotton’d be some good. Ef I didn’t mark my cotton o’ my raisin’, an’ toat de money myself, I’d jes like t’ know whar yo’d git yo’ tea, an’ coffee, an’ flou’h, an’ all dem tings?”

With an admonitory shake of her finger, she entered the house, and resumed her culinary operations; but soon reappeared, bearing a gun and accoutrements, and sundry materials for polishing them; having first dexterously examined it, and found it without charge.

“Heah now, yo’ Pipsie; yo’ got sense ’nough t’ clean dis ’ere gun?” she asked. “Reckon you’ll be mighty proud o’ dis ’ere ‘finery,’ marchin’ up an’ down long o’ de res’, an’ de folks all lookin’ on.”

“He, he! Didn’t I say ‘smartest little wife’? Reckon I kin do dat are. Reckon I’ll p’rade on de fo’th, an’ yo’ll wait till Sunday.”

Two of his neighbors presently joined Mr. Pipsie, with whom he was soon discussing the anticipated celebration, which was quite a novelty in the locality. Suddenly a loud sound of wheels was heard.

“Hello!” cried Dan, springing from his seat. “Heah comes my friend Bakah! Hello, Babe! Bett’ take car, dat team, else yo’ git toated clean off, an gone to smash ’fo’ yo’ muddah knows nuffin ’bout it. Reckon yo’ didn’t ax her mout yo’ gwout alone?”

The sound of the jolting wagon rendered this speech inaudible to the youthful driver, who was passing without a “Howdy!” (an offense in that locality) but the loud, derisive “guffaw” of the three colored men, which followed Dan’s sally, did not fail to reach him, and he paused suddenly, just past the door.

He was tall and large, but unusually boyish for a youth of twenty years. In an angry tone he shouted:

“Dan Pipsie, come out here! I want to see yer.”

That individual made his way, quite deliberately, to the side of the vehicle, and with a strange mixture of timidity and bravado in his manner.

“What do you mean by cursing me in that way? I ha’n’t done nothing to you,” said the boy.

“Oh, laws! I’s jest in fun, an’ I’s shor’ yo’ didn’t heah yo’r name mixin’ up in it. A man’s a right to talk or cuss on his own do’,” (door) “an’ nothin’ to no man no’ his boy gwoine ’long de road.”

The youngster’s eyes flashed, and his face was pale with rage. What! he to be called a boy by a “nigger?” He looked down upon the diminutive black figure beside him, in whose hands was one of Remington’s best rifles, and that alone restrained him from laying the long lash of his driving-whip close about the “black biped,” as he mentally called him. He did venture to retort with some asperity.

The altercation was brief, but heated, and soon the whip was cracked decidedly closer to Pipsie’s left ear than was comfortable to its owner.

“Yo’ jes be little mo’ ca’ful, yo’ young man!” said Pipsie, rubbing the ear briskly. “Yo’ not got no runaway niggah slave heah now. I’se a free man, an’ got as much rights as yo’, an’ mo’n dat, too, I’se got a United States gun heah, an’ I knows how to shoot, too. Yo’ needn’t ’sult no National Guards fo’ nuffin’. Ef yo’ ha’n’t got no mo’ yo’ want say t’ me, yo’ bes’ jes’ git ’long ’bout yo’ business, or yo’ may git hurt!” and he made a feint to raise the empty gun to his eye, when young Tom Baker rode away in great haste.

Baconsville had never witnessed such a “celebration” as it enjoyed the next day, which came bright and beautiful.

Though usually tardy in morning rising—possibly from dread of the malaria, which the sun dissipates by nine o’clock, on this memorable day, the inhabitants of the village were astir at an early hour, for, through the heavy fog which crept up from the river, and shrouded the whole valley, the red-haired and fair-skinned Marmor, and the largest, strongest, and blackest citizen, with a few followers, were dimly visible, dragging a blacksmith’s anvil along the principal streets.

They paused frequently in front of the residences and shops of the chief citizens to salute them by an explosion of gunpowder upon the anvil—the nearest approach to a cannonade possible in the impecuneous little city. But not earlier than four o’clock in the afternoon was the excitement at its height. At that time the brass band was playing national airs under a great oak tree on a vacant plot of ground on which a platform had been erected; and a few seats placed in front of it for the accommodation of the gentler sex were rapidly filling; for, at a safe distance, thirteen explosions upon the anvil, in commemoration of the thirteen original colonies, were being followed by thirty-seven, in honor of the then existing States of the Union.

These were the recognized signals for the commencement of the most important exercises of the day; and the militia having formed at the armory, marched to the rostrum, bearing the “Stars and Stripes,” and were disposed on either side of the speaker’s stand, while other free and patriotic citizens stood in compact groups near and about the well-filled seats.

All being ready, a chairman elected, the glass of water and bouquet of flowers placed before the speaker, and the band having duly discoursed, a short, smooth-voiced negro—an accredited preacher of the Methodist persuasion, and member of the State Legislature from that district—was introduced. He made a long, peculiarly energetic, interesting and instructive address, rich in metaphor and quaint expressions, glowing with native eloquence, and abounding in graphic description, wholesome counsel, and eulogy of the “United States.”

Not an allusion was made to the past relations of the races in the South, unless an exhortation to gratitude towards the United States be so construed, in view of the fact that the very few whites present acknowledged no such debt.

After the address, music followed, and then Marmor was formally introduced to his neighbors, and read in clear, loud tones the inevitable “Preamble and Declaration of Independence,” to the manifest disgust of a small group of men who stood in the rear of the crowd.