THE spirit of anarchy was in the tainted air. The bonds that held
society were loosened. Government threatened to become organised crime
instead of the organised virtue of the community.
The report of crimes of unusual horror among the ignorant and the
vicious began now to startle the world.
The Rev. John Durham on his rounds among the poor discovered a little
negro boy whom the parents had abandoned to starve. His father had
become a drunken loafer at Independence and the Freedman’s Bureau
delivered the child to his mother and her sister who lived in a cabin
about two miles from Hambright, and ordered them to care for the boy.
A few days later the child had disappeared. A search was instituted, and
the charred bones were found in an old ash heap in the woods near this
cabin. The mother had knocked him in the head and burned the body in a
drunken orgie with dissolute companions.
The sense of impending disaster crushed the hearts of thoughtful and
serious people. One of the last acts of Governor Macon, whose office was
now under the control of the military commandant at Charleston, South
Carolina, was to issue a proclamation, appointing a day of fasting and
prayer to God for deliverance from the ruin that threatened the state
under the dominion of Legree and the negroes.
It was a memorable day in the history of the people.
In many places they met in the churches the night before, and held
all-night watches and prayer meetings. They felt that a pestilence
worse than the Black Death of the Middle Ages threatened to extinguish
civilisation.
The Baptist church at Hambright was crowded to the doors with
white-faced women and sorrowful men.
About ten o’clock in the morning, pale and haggard from a sleepless
night of prayer and thought, the Preacher arose to address the people.
The hush of death fell as he gazed silently over the audience for
a moment. How pale his face! They had never seen him so moved with
passions that stirred his inmost soul. His first words were addressed to
God. He did not seem to see the people before him.
“Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
“Before the mountains were brought forth or ever Thou hadst formed the
earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God!”
The people instinctively bowed their heads, fired by the subtle quality
of intense emotion the tones of his voice communicated, and many of the
people were already in tears.
“Thou turnest man to destruction: and sayest, return, ye children of
men.”
“Who knowest the power of thine anger?”
“Return, O Lord, how long? and let it repent Thee concerning Thy
servants.”
“Beloved,” he continued, “it was permitted unto your fathers and
brothers and children to die for their country. You must live for her in
the black hour of despair. There will be no roar of guns, no long lines
of gleaming bayonets, no flash of pageantry or martial music to stir
your souls.
“You are called to go down, man by man, alone, naked and unarmed in
the blackness of night and fight with the powers of hell for your
civilisation.
“You must look this question squarely in the face. You are to be put to
the supreme test. You are to stand at the judgment bar of the ages and
make good your right to life. The attempt is to be deliberately made to
blot out Anglo-Saxon society and substitute African barbarism.
“A few years ago a Southern Representative in a stupid rage knocked
Charles Sumner down with a cane and cracked his skull. Now it is this
poor cracked brain, mad with hate and revenge, that is attempting to
blot the Southern states from the map of the world and build Negro
territories on their ruins. In the madness of party passions, for the
first time in history, an anarchist, Thaddeus Stevens, has obtained the
dictatorship of a great Constitutional Government, hauled down its flag
and nailed the Black Flag of Confiscation and Revenge to its masthead.
“The excuse given for this, that the lawmakers of the South attempted to
reinslave the Negro by their enactments against vagrants and provisions
for apprenticeship, is so weak a lie, it will not deserve the notice
of a future historian. Every law passed on these subjects since the
abolition of slavery was simply copied from the codes of the Northern
states where free labour was the basis of society.
“Lincoln alone, with his great human heart and broad statesmanship could
have saved us. But the South had no luck. Again and again in the war,
victory was within her grasp, and an unseen hand snatched it away. In
the hour of her defeat the bullet of a madman strikes down the great
President, her last refuge in ruin!
“God alone is our help. Let us hold fast to our faith in Him. We can
only cry with aching hearts in the language of the Psalmist of old, ‘How
long, O Lord? how long!’
“The voices of three men now fill the world with their bluster--Charles
Sumner, a crack-brained theorist; Thad-deus Stevens, a clubfooted
misanthrope, and B. F. Butler, a triumvirate of physical and mental
deformity. Yet they are but the cracked reeds of a great organ that
peals forth the discord of a nation’s blind rage. When the storm is
past, and reason rules passion, they will be flung into oblivion. We
must bend to the storm. It is God’s will.”
The people left the church with heavy hearts. They were hopelessly
depressed. In the afternoon, as the churches were being slowly emptied,
groups of negroes stood on the corners talking loudly and discussing the
meaning of this new Sunday so strangely observed. It began to snow. It
was late in March and this was an unusual phenomenon in the South.
The next morning the earth was covered with four inches of snow, that
glistened in the sun with a strange reddish hue. On examination it was
found that every snow drop had in it a tiny red spot that looked like
a drop of blood! Nothing of the kind had ever been seen before in the
history of the world, so far as any one knew.
This freak of nature seemed a harbinger of sure and terrible calamity.
Even the most cultured and thoughtful could not shake off the impression
it made.
The Preacher did his best to cheer the people in his daily intercourse
with them. His Sunday sermons seemed in these darkest days unusually
tender and hopeful. It was a marvel to those who heard his bitter and
sorrowful speech on the day of fasting and prayer, that he could preach
such sermons as those which followed.
Occasionally old Uncle Joshua Miller would ask him to preach for the
negroes in their new church on Sunday afternoons. He always went, hoping
to keep some sort of helpful influence over them in spite of their new
leaders and teachers. It was strange to watch this man shake hands with
these negroes, call them familiarly by their names, ask kindly after
their families, and yet carry in his heart the presage of a coming
irreconcilable conflict. For no one knew more clearly than he, that the
issues were being joined from the deadly grip of that conflict of
races that would determine whether this Republic would be Mulatto or
Anglo-Saxon. Yet at heart he had only the kindliest feelings for
these familiar dusky faces now rising a black storm above the horizon,
threatening the existence of civilised society, under the leadership of
Simon Legree, and Mr. Stevens.
It seemed a joke sometimes as he thought of it, a huge, preposterous
joke, this actual attempt to reverse the order of nature, turn society
upside down, and make a thicklipped, flat-nosed negro but yesterday
taken from the jungle, the ruler of the proudest and strongest race of
men evolved in two thousand years of history. Yet when he remembered the
fierce passions in the hearts of the demagogues who were experimenting
with this social dynamite, it was a joke that took on a hellish,
sinister meaning.