GHOST FEATURE OF THE MOVEMENT. ITS PHILOSOPHY.
Contrasted Views of the Organization inspired by its Dealings with
the Public--Its Political Bearing--Its _Objects_ not deemed Harmful
to Society--New England Transcendentalists, and the Ponderous Science
which they put before the World under the Title of
"Negropholism"--The Colored Man in the South--Kindly Feeling for the
Race cherished by Native Southerners--Households Presided over by
Colored Matrons--Superstitious Tendencies of Cuffey--One of the
Conditions of his Tropical Nativity--Heathenish Lapses--His Ideas
about "Ghosts," and the Realm which they Inhabit--Interviewing the
former--Spook Kinsfolk--He holds them in the highest Veneration--The
ideal "Uncle Tom's Cabin"--Wherein it was a Failure--The "Infantile
Sex" and their Greed for Ghost-lore--Fighting their way through
Legions of Shadowy Foes to their "Curtained Rest"--Young Professors
of the Spiritual Science--Painful Reminiscences--Use to which the
Aged Patriarch, or Beldam, as the Case might be, put their
Prerogative--Talent for relating Ghost Stories--The Young White Men
of the South trained up in this School--Insight into Negro Character
obtained therefrom--K. K. K. Affectation of the Supernatural based
upon the latter.
The two preceding chapters may occur to those who were not informed of the
nature and degree of the excitement which waited upon the movements of
these secret organizations in obscure and uninformed neighborhoods, and
among the negroes in various localities, as partaking of the hypercritical
in narrative. But those who, by reason of residence or other accident,
were made conversant with such scenes almost every week in the year, and
who were not unfrequently drawn away from the contemplation of social
misdemeanors or crimes of the most serious import to split their sides
over some ludicrous _faux pas_, or intended farce, of the perpetrators,
will not be slow to discover their basis of fact, nor accord to the author
that honesty of purpose to which he lays claim in the conduct of these
pages. It was stated in a previous chapter that the secret organization
known as the Ku Klux Klan was a political movement intended to offset what
was known as the Loyal League, an order whose draft was taken from the
negro population, but which was controlled by, and in the interest of, a
class of political harpies known as carpet-baggers. The latter element, by
means of this political engine, dominated the politics of the South for a
period of more than five years, and while its power may not have been
broken by the influences set in motion by the counter movement, and though
the latter must be condemned on general principles, yet among the people
where it had its origin, and stripped of the analogies which the
imaginations of fault-finders would be apt to supply, its objects were not
deemed harmful to society. As to its wisdom, there can be no doubt that it
was aimed at the most salient of the enemy's weak points.
In treating this proposition, we shall seek to avoid that ponderous
science which that branch of transcendentalists who acknowledge Mr.
Wendell Phillips as their leader put before the world under the title of
Negropholism, and deal with the article as we find it--so much on the
greasy surface of the native that the temptation of the carpet-bagger to
use it for base ends must be regarded an uncommon one.
[The people of the South, young and old, who were brought up under that
social regimen which embodied the negro as a prominent and necessary
feature, will appreciate the feelings of the writer when he states that he
has not, and never can have, any feeling of enmity towards this race. Some
of the tenderest passages in his heart history he is glad to refer to that
period when negroes were not only admitted _en famille_ among the whites,
but in innumerable instances given absolute control over the household
affairs of their masters. He numbers among his cultured acquaintance
scores of young men and maidens who never knew any other parentage, and
who can never admit a dearer relation than their adopted paternity. The
negroes, if vicious and mean, owe it to that cruel divorcement from the
Southern social plan effected by their political leaders, and to the life
of vagabondage to which they are doomed under the new system; they are not
more so by nature than other men. If, therefore, the writer is tempted to
speak of their weaknesses, it is in no irreverential sense, and with a
laudable object in view, to which this policy will be seen to be strictly
antecedent.]
That the negro is by nature grossly superstitious, no one who has had even
tolerable means of information will deny. In another chapter we have
prevised something on general principles concerning the superstition of
mankind, but the comparison to be drawn between the negro and all other
branches of the Adamic tree, as to this particular fruitage, is so
unequal, that we shall ask the reader to accept the former as a very
modified presentation of a theory that was made to order for the crown of
Cuffey. And however much this may be untrue with regard to other animals,
this faculty of the individual under discussion has nothing whatever to do
with his aesthetical being. It does not in any sense enlist that high
poetic principle which is one of the conditions of his tropical nativity.
Left to himself, with all the appliances of civilization and the
encouragement of its examples about him, his superstition will subject
him, in the short space of a twelvemonth, to heathenish lapses which the
weak-headed Mongolian, under the same outward conditions, has resisted for
a period of six thousand years. Voudooism is, perhaps, the weakest form of
heathen worship which this moral condition has developed, and, despite the
few occasions admitted by the structure of our laws, it is strictly a
native product. Those who contend that it is an African transplant, or
borrowed from the congeners of the race on those shores, are surely not
guided by convictions derived from an examination into its philosophy.
But it is a very radical form of savagism in worship, including human
sacrifices among its rites, and as we have anticipated that it had its
birth in the rice- and cotton-fields of the South, further remark on this
division of the argument is deemed unnecessary.
In contrast with other races of beings, the world of shadows is to the
imagination of the black man a thing of gloom. The existences who people
this realm are hobgoblins, and the standard of the latter a mild
abridgment of the arch-fiend. He, nevertheless, holds them in the highest
veneration, and is prepared to accept their revelations concerning
himself, and indeed all other subjects of mundane philosophy, as oracular.
He even holds familiar converse with them--when an interview can be
contrived without endangering those barriers of etiquette which preserve
to either a fair start in a foot-race--and calculates with tolerable
accuracy that the churchyard spawn who affect this characterization are
counterfeits. On the latter subject he has doubts, however, which on
occasion might be turned to his disadvantage.
Whether it is affectation with him, or a kind of prescience with which he
is gifted in view of his moral structure, we do not pretend to decide; but
he boasts a knowledge of the private affairs of his spook kinsfolk (they
are invariably uncles, aunts, grand relations, etc.) which would be
considered sacrilege in another being. If he deems you worthy of such
confidence, he will describe to you the ghostly raiment they wear,
diversified in other particulars, but always sombre-hued, and in no
recorded instance cut bias. He is rarely at fault in assigning the period
of antiquity from which they date, and if opportunity served, could lead
you to the exact spot where their archaeological remains "smell sweet." He
can give, with that emphasis of detail which grows out of perfect
familiarity with his subject, their occupations--ranging from
yacht-building, horse-culture, and other of the fine arts, all the way
down to book-making. And finally, if pressed for information, can state
some astonishing facts with regard to their phrenological development.
With him these essences are always evil spirits, and though he views them
in the constant performance of deeds that would quickly promote them to
the hangman's offices if enterprised in the flesh, yet his philosophy so
confounds the means and extremes relating to the transaction, that he can
see no way out of the difficulty but to respect the latter as proceeding
from the former.
Though they cherish a causeless animosity against himself and his kind,
and war on the latter with a chronic wastefulness of the vital spark,
which could only proceed from a want of appreciation of this blessing
inseparable from their standpoint, yet he cannot go behind his apotheosis
to find fault with the system of government upon which it proceeds. In
fact, though he avoids the "ghoul-haunted" precincts with which his
neighborhood abounds, and trembles when he recites the deeds of valor
performed by some warlike example against fleshly hosts, yet when he has
taken his distance, and duly calculated the chances in his favor, he
delights, above all things, to gather about himself the philosophic
weaklings of his race, and, having launched upon his theme, observe the
absolute failure of the kink in the woolly crown of each as a thing to be
depended on in time of emergency.
The ideal "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had very little of the ghost element in its
construction. In this respect, as in some others, it was a miserable
failure. The real structure was a ghost's palace, where they came and went
at pleasure, and not unfrequently took up their abode. To this habitation,
in _ante bellum_ times, presided over by Uncle Dick or Aunt Rachel, it
mattered little--for both were magicians of no mean order--the juveniles
of both races flocked after nightfall for supplies of ghost-lore; and to
say that they were accommodated will but faintly describe, we fear, that
anguished state of soul (what Southern boy or man does not drop a tear on
this reminiscence?) with which, a few hours later, they passed out into
the darkness and fought their way through legions of shadowy foes to their
"curtained rest."
These ghost stories, which always resulted disastrously for flesh and
blood, and had a churchyard twang about them that came with peculiar
relish to the youngster under a strong glare of candle- or fire light,
were the very apple-pie of farm-life to the "infantile sex," despite the
after-piece, which, after all, was a contingency that might be disposed of
at will by the philanthropic source of the mischief. How often have we
observed a circle of these young professors of the spiritual science
defiantly "lean back" in their proclivities when the crooning narration
began, and the great fireplace sent out effulgent rays, suddenly alter
their manner for one of marked deference as the ghost-character came on
with stately tread and took its place in the forefront of thrilling
reminiscence; and then, as the rays of firelight went to sleep with the
embers one by one, hitch up their seats within the margin that remained,
getting nearer by degrees, until at length, as the story grew towards its
denouement and the fire hung over its ashy tomb, crowding from all
quarters, they threatened to overturn the narrator--so great was the
terror inspired by the shadows which lay behind them.
But to no one had these performances such constant and deep relish as the
aged patriarch or beldam, as the case might be, who was elevated by their
young suffragans to the post of mentor for the time being. They revelled
in this employment, first, because it suited their talents; and second,
because it was perfectly adapted to their emotional nature. An African,
moreover, is gratified beyond expression by the knowledge that he
possesses authority, no matter how brief or weak in extent, which may be
exercised over his fellows; and there is not, we believe, a living party
to such a bequest of social right and liberty over conscience as that to
which we have referred, who was not a sufferer under the arrangement to an
extent which he rarely admits to stranger confidences. But this
improvement of the occasion which came to him on the part of the
fiction-vender was not always done in mere wantonness. Not unfrequently
the result achieved was without design, and when the contrary was true,
the design was quite an intelligent one. When he acted intelligently, the
object kept in view was to gain such an ascendency over the minds of his
young auditory that he might reap either present benefits, or call it up
to advantage in the future; and when we reflect that his audiences were
largely composed of his young masters and mistresses, whose influence was
great at head-quarters, and who would one day succeed to the estate, the
wisdom of his conclusions must be conceded.
Trained up in this school, and knowing by their later experience of men
the precise extent to which the plantation darkey was controlled by the
superstitious notions which he disseminated (for he was no hypocrite), the
young white men of the South were at no loss in adopting countervailing
forces when the Loyal League storm burst upon the country. The
superstition of the negro was not a weakness, but a ruling characteristic;
and at this central idea of his being the Ku-Klux movement was directed.
Being thus addressed to his fears, it will be seen, by any one wishing
information on the subject, that the latter was designed to whip him into
obedience to what was then thought, but is now known, to be the ruling
element in Southern politics. We do not assert that it was a just
expedient; we cannot believe, in view of later developments in our local
politics, that it was a wise one; but its transactions have passed into
history, and it is with them that we are concerned.