The Broken Sword
A Pictorial Page in Reconstruction. By D. Worthington.
[Illustration: Alice Seymour]
THE BROKEN SWORD:
--OR--
A PICTORIAL PAGE IN RECONSTRUCTION
--BY--
D. WORTHINGTON.
WILSON, N. C.:
P. D. GOLD & SONS,
1901.
This work is respectfully inscribed to the
Daughters of the Confederacy
By the Author,
Who followed, as their fathers did, the "Southern
Cross."
INDEX.
CHAP. PAGE
Introductory. III
Looking Backward I 9
Our Scotch-Irish II 25
The Assassins of the Peace of the South III 34
Types and Shadows IV 45
Patriotic Men Deliberating V 60
The Mills Are Grinding VI 72
A Politician of the New School VII 85
Memorial Day VIII 96
The Broken Cruse IX 109
Freedom in Flower X 121
The Majesty of the Law XI 139
Home Again XII 146
A Knight of the White Camelia XIII 153
The Oath of Fealty XIV 174
The Black Diplomat XV 185
Under the Hammer XVI 197
A House Warming XVII 208
The Writ of Ejectment XVIII 218
The Coroner's Inquest XIX 232
A Daniel Come to Judgment XX 247
An Unseen Hand Upon the Lever XXI 259
An Hour With Dickens XXII 273
The Absent Minded Judge XXIII 281
The Dipping of the Red Stars XXIV 303
The Parting of the Ways XXV 316
ILLUSTRATED BY JAMES DEMPSEY BULLOCK.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Page
Alice Seymour _Frontispiece_
"Ef yu wus to brake loose und drap, yu'd bust up
ebery scalyhorg inde Souf." 44
"Dare goes joshaway, now, wid Ole Glory strowed er
roun' him, steppin lak a rare-hoss over de tater
ridges." 84
"Kase de high shurruff he dun und seed what wuz
ergwine ter cum arter de bellion fell, und he
flopped ober ter de publikins"--"Ole Mars jon
haint ergwine ter flop nowheys," replied
Clarissa 120
"I'm ergwins back lak dat prodigle man dat et up
dem corn cobs way out yander to de tuther eend
o'de yearth." 173
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
INTRODUCTION.
"I have considered the oppressions that are done under the sun, and
on the side of the oppressor there is power."
In the enforcement of the policy of Reconstruction in the South, the
evidences were from day to day becoming so cumulative and decisive, that
nothing but the discipline of an enraged party, coupled with the
"spoils" principle, prevented the whole mass of the community from a
universal expression of its desire to have it abandoned. Reasoning men
everywhere felt that it must continue to multiply its mischiefs. "But,"
said its authors, "treason must be made odious, and the late
insurrectionary States must feel that there is a higher law than that
promulgated by their ordinances of secession."
The Spanish inquisition, now the abhorrence of all enlightened minds,
was long sustained in many centuries by the tyrants' plea of necessity.
In the burning of a thousand heretics the religious zealot saw the hand
of God; in the destruction of a thousand sorcerers, the fanatic
discerned the commonweal of the people; so in the whipcords with which
the people of the South were so mercilessly scourged, there was found an
antiseptic for the gangrenous wounds inflicted by the civil war. All
these cruelties were legalized, while bleeding humanity was sinking
under the burden of oppression. In the collision of exasperated
passions, it is the temper of aggression that always strikes the first
blow. The government of the South by carpet-baggers was essentially
oppressive and inquisitorial. It was, in its practical operation, a pure
and unadulterated despotism, superseding the protection guaranteed by
the Federal Constitution to each and every State. It was under the
dominion of an organized anarchy, with legislatures and courts of
justice, subordinated to a lawless assemblage of unprincipled men
calling themselves the representatives and judges of the people. Among
its necessarily implied powers was that of confiscation; and numbered in
its enumeration of brutalities, was a nameless crime that shocked the
moral sense of mankind. Reconstruction came upon the South with fearful
impulse.
Perhaps the "hour is on the wing," when a worthier hand will write the
history of the institutional age that was sandwiched between the slavery
civilization ante-dating the sixties, and that which minimized the
pernicious power of manhood suffrage at the close of the century; or
perhaps when that remnant that still survives in the weakness of age to
"Weep o'er their wounds, o'er tales of sorrow done.
Shoulder their crutch and show how fields are won."
shall have "passed over the river;" when the threnody of the "olden
days" which to us is like the music of Carrol along the hills of
Slimora, "pleasant, but mournful to the soul," shall be forgotten, some
ambitious youth will uplift the veil; will take a glance of the whole
horizon, and the south will unbosom her griefs that have been so long
concealed. It will not do for a hand that drew the sword to guide the
pen. By a law of our nature all passive impressions impair our moral
sensibilities. Contact with misery renders us callous to those
experiences; a constant view of vice lessens its deformity. If any
expression in this humble narrative shall appear ill-tempered, let me
say in the language of Themistocles at the battle of Salamis, "Strike,
but hear me." The whole country has long since repudiated the dogma that
"all men are born free and equal" and endowed with certain
imprescriptible and inalienable rights. This heresy of course found its
highest expression in the post-bellum amendments to the constitution,
and the remedial statutes which made their efficiency complete. The war
was the logical fulfillment of prophecies that had their forecast in the
public councils before the nullification doctrine was forced upon the
Senate by Mr. Calhoun. It sprang without extraneous aid from
uninterpretable expressions in the organic law, which were finally
explained away in the effusion of blood. Reconstruction, in the
conception of men who provided the sinews of war, was the prolific
aftermath; and in this harvest field, the gleaners plied their vocation
with merciless activity, reinforced in their villainies by the freedmen,
who, in an experimental way, were publicly evincing their unfitness for
citizenship. The Civil war gendered this brood that filled the South
with horror, and their disorders and tumults precipitated a crisis that
plunged the Southland into a paroxysm from the Potomac to the Rio
Grande. There was no refuge from an evil that was all-pervasive. The
great war with its pageants and sacrifices, its banners and generals,
its storming soldiery and reservoirs of human blood was almost thrust
out of the memory as the patriots of the sixties stood face to face to
the all-encompassing perils of reconstruction. They saw the flag of the
Union--the almost lifeless emblem of the genius of their
liberties--frown feebly at the promulgation of a law that disfranchised
300,000 American citizens. The old banner seemed to turn her eye to the
eagle at her staff-head and ask him to lend her his wide-spreading
pinions, that she might bend the wing and fly away from the polluted
spot--from the embodied forms of evil and ruin. Almost every utterance
of the complaining tongue that was syllabled into speech, was to this
effect: "Will our country--our civilization--withstand the shock?" Our
Southern characters had been enriched by an assemblage of all the
treasures which refined intellect could accumulate; we had wisely built
upon foundations of public virtue; our institutions had the permanency
of age and respectability, and exhibited everywhere the fullest maturity
of athletic vigor. The paroles of Southern soldiers amnestied them from
arrest for past military offences, but the clothing which their poverty
obliged them to wear marked the target at which the lawless and vicious
shot at their will. Personal and State rights were abridged until
nothing was left of the sovereignty of the barren commonwealths or the
enthralled individual. There were no juries of the vicinage but negroes;
and daily the broken-hearted people were unwittingly aggrandizing
rapacious officials. To the most depraved of the negroes the
carpet-baggers were constantly appealing with arguments that stirred
their blood. This narrative will not in an historical sense deal with
the subject of reconstruction; from its want of compactness and
continuity it would prove inefficient as a lesson or a guide. We
present, however, imperfect portraits of a few men and women who were
unfortunately in the pathway of the storm that stripped the husbandman
of the fruits of his labor, the Southron of his liberty, stifled the
cries of the distressed, and rendered the tenures of property unstable
and insecure. In no conjuncture in which this paroxysm of politics
placed the former masters of slaves, did they abate their care and zeal
for their betterment. Monuments of brass and sculptured stone are not
sufficiently enduring to memorialize the virtues of the negroes of the
old plantations of the South, who watched and waited for the avenging
arm of Providence to right the wrongs of old master. May God's mercy
rest and abide upon this scattered remnant, that, like autumn's leaves
in the forest, have been blown hither and thither by the wraith of the
tempest.
[Illustration]
THE BROKEN SWORD.
CHAPTER I.
LOOKING BACKWARD.
I have surrendered at discretion to vagrant thoughts. Just as the idle
school-boy will pause beside the limpid stream to watch its eddying
waters as they go on and on, "never hasting, never resting," so I sit
to-night in the haze of the years that are dead, with the mind sadly
reminiscent, and I watch the shadows as they seem to sketch upon the
memory the familiar faces of our loved and lost, and I hear their
laughter and songs--grateful echoes from the realm of the long ago. I am
gazing again upon the sepulchre of the old South, after the plowshare
of war and reconstruction had run the last furrow. In the garnering of
the red harvest did our men and women of the sixties maintain themselves
with a proper decorum? Were they less patriotic, less self-sacrificing,
less ready with heart and hand to divert the destructive revolution of
principle than their fathers of '76, who in the upbuilding of
republican institutions wavered not in their purpose; when the terror
and ignominy of the scaffold were before them; when they knew their
blood must cement the foundations of the structure they were rearing,
and they themselves become the first sacrifice in the temple of liberty,
which they were dedicating? In that epoch and since we have been making
the grand experiment of self-government; not as Rome made it, when
liberty there was only a name for licentiousness; not as Greece made it,
when a demagogue swayed the deluded masses and lacked only a throne to
make him a king; but with a constitution that should deserve the
encomium of the people, for the unutterable blessings it should bestow;
a constitution impervious to unjust exactions and unpatriotic
suggestions, we hoped for a policy dictated in a spirit of compromise;
but as I look back upon the eventful past, the first adventure of Gil
Blas occurs to me. He had been furnished by his uncle with a sorry mule
and thirty or forty pistoles, and sent forth to seek his fortune. He set
out accordingly, but had not proceeded far from home, when, sitting on
his beast counting his pistoles with much satisfaction, into his hat,
the mule suddenly raised its head and pricked up its ears. Gil Blas
looked around to see the cause of its alarm, and perceived an old hat
upon the ground in the middle of the road, with a rosary of very large
beads in it. At the same time he heard a voice addressing him in a very
pathetic tone, "Good traveler, in the name of the merciful God, and of
all the saints, do drop a few pistoles in the hat." Looking in the
direction from which these words proceeded, he saw to his dismay the
muzzle of a blunderbuss projecting through the hedge, and pointing
directly at his head. Gil Blas, not much pleased with the looks of the
pious mendicant, dropped a few pistoles in the hat and scampered away as
fast as he could. This slight narrative presents to the mind of the
writer the most perfect emblem of the pacific remedy of reconstruction
in its beginning.
To the contemplative mind there is a melancholy pleasure in looking
backward; as shadows will enter unbidden into the camera obscura,
though every portal appears securely guarded; so memories will flit
fantastically into the imagination when every approach seems closed
against intrusion. I am looking backward, as it were, through a smoked
glass, for a great sunburst is within the radius of vision, a sunburst
that cheered our tired eyes with its thousand scintillant gleams in the
hot days of August A. D. Nineteen Hundred.
Looking backward upon a picturesque civilization--upon the old
homesteads and plantations of the South, with their hallowed
associations and ideals--with their impedimenta not of human chattels,
but of compact masses of freed slaves, the underpinning of that
civilization in its concrete form.
I have asked the historian, the essayist, the chronicler, the
clairvoyant, to aid me in the retrospection, but they answer dubiously.
There is no trodden path that I may pursue. No friendly hand that I may
clasp as I stride across fens and brakes, and morasses: even the echoes
of receding footsteps, like the laughter of happy voices are hushed and
dead "lang syne." There are faded letters however that I may read;
broken swords and battered shields hanging upon decaying walls; moth
eaten uniforms in garret and closet, that will guide me backward. The
line of vision is traversed by unwieldy throngs of dilapidated men, in
tattered gray clothes, without a federal head, without intelligent
momentum, breaking up and dissolving like icebergs drifting southward;
they are coming back home where there is neither grain for the sickle,
nor hope for the husbandman: coming back to little cottages where lights
in the windows kept burning for dear papa flickered and spumed, then
died down into the rustic candlesticks, when the little watchful eyes so
tired and weary, closed upon the moonlight that shimmered within the
humble chamber.
Looking back over grave yards, where we reverently laid away our jewels
to be placed by the Great Lapidary in His Crown by and by, when we shall
all rise from our sleep and shine in His emitted glory. Looking backward
over a strange realm, without boundaries or capitals, where there are no
soldiers and no battle fields, and where every thing is so fragrant and
ethereal. Here we may fashion pictures and weave around them gossamer
draperies as insubstantial as this golden twilight.
Hard-hitting, rough-riding moss-troopers rode over the subjugated
domains of the bewildered South, with swords that flashed and turned
every way like Alaric's; rode hither to obliterate the past, its
monuments, its shrines, its traditions; to scarify the old south with
harrows and bayonets; its altars, its homes, its civilization, and to
fetter with chains a great warlike people, with a purpose as fatuous as
ever animated the swart maid of Philistia. Against this senseless
vengeance, the South rebelled again with the same old defiance, the same
old manhood. You may prod the wounded lion with pikes and sabres, but
you cannot tread upon it with iron heels without hearing its roar and
feeling its fangs. To these marauders, the old South was but a moor fowl
to be plucked and eaten. To us she was dynastic, like Hapsburg,
Plantagenet or Hohenzollern. To them the South was a huge incubator, out
of which was hatched "Stratagems and treasons:" To us she was a Queen,
still wearing the purple, still grasping the sceptre, as in past
evolutions and crises. She was Our Queen when a full century ago, and
before there was a cabin upon her plantations she pleaded for the
emancipation of slaves and was insultingly asked to withdraw her
petition by the Merchant Marine of Massachusetts. She was Our Queen
when envenomed abolitionists were gathering the aftermath of the "Higher
law proclamation;" she was Our Queen when Ossawattomie Brown unleashed
his bloodhounds upon a fresher trail at Harper's Ferry; she was Our
Queen when Sumpter ran up a flag that had never before fluttered in a
gale, never before greeted a young nation with its maiden blushes,
followed by the hopes, the prayers, the aspirations, faith and loyalty
of ten million men, women and children; Our Queen when "old Traveler"
was stripped of his dust covered housings and led ever so weary back
into Old Mars. Bob's stables; Our Queen when the last cavalier wiped the
blood from his sabre and scabbarded it forever. God grant she may always
be Our Queen that we may be her liegemen, leal and right trusty in all
catastrophes! Hence we go back to think of her, to write of her, though
a widow bereaved of her husband, and a mother who has buried her first
born. There is no sword now to gleam like a flash of light over the
plumes of charging squadrons: there is no guidon to mark the line of
direction through defile and mountain pass: no call of the bugle "to
saddle and away," no thanksgiving like that of Jackson; "God crowned our
arms with Victory at McDowell yesterday;" No smile like that of Lee as
the Army of the Potomac with trailing banners was double quicking back
to Washington. Ah! no, but the old South through her blinding tears is
smiling still; her dear old face re-lighted by a fresher inspiration.
A trifling dash of time between 1860 and 1870, but events have been
packed away within that decade, that would overlap the four corners of
any other century in the calendar. Within those years were compounded
somewhere in laboratories all the combustible elements of war and
pillage; the casting the projectiles that would destroy a hemisphere.
Broken hearts--crushed hopes--desolated homes, an enslaved country,
wrongs, indignities, outrages, oppressions, all, all wrought by the
cruel instrumentalities of great masters of tragedy. Here is an old
mansion with turrets and esplanades and terraces long neglected and
sadly out of repair. Here are great oaks of a century's growth planted
and pruned by hands that have long since forgotten their cunning. Here
are lapping waters singing in low sweet octaves as they did when poured
out of the hollow of His Hand. Here is the old rookery out of which are
ricochetting birds almost of every voice and plume. Here are cattle, red
and dappled, cropping the meadow grass. Here are vast expanses clad in
the refreshing drapery of nature, upheaving their grassy billows. Here
are the crumbling cabins of the old slaves, in silent platoons that
flank the old mansion, the earmarks of a picturesque civilization abused
and denounced. Slaves, many of whom like the paintings of Titian and
Murillo and Correggio in the great mullioned halls have come down from
former generations. In yonder clump of soughing pines stood the little
meeting house of the "cullud folks" on "Old Marsa's plantation." Here
for decades they worshipped. In the little brook that glides along so
cheerily singing as it goes, they had baptized adult "bredrin and
sisterin." Here many of them had felt the touch of the Master upon the
emancipated souls, and heard His voice in their spiritual uplifting,
tenderly calling, and there when the gnarled and knotted hands had
ceased their toil "Ole Marsa and Ole Misses" had laid them crosswise
upon rigid, lifeless bosoms, that heaved not again with the pangs of
suffering; and out yonder under the maples, hard by the little babbling
brook, reverent and tender hands white and black had lowered the rude
coffin and covered it up in "God's acre," and here around the little
altar ole Marster, and Miss Alice and Mars Harry worshipped with them.
No master, no mistress, no slave in this consecrated ground; no black,
no white, in the invisible Presence; no hard times to come again; no
tithing men, nor tax gatherers; no snarling, snapping wolf to snatch the
gnawed bone from the hungry wife and her starving child. If the larder
were empty the "great house" had an exhaustless supply. If clothes were
rent there was "allus stuff in de loom;" If the clouds gathered for snow
"ole marsa" would put on his great coat and knock at the doors and ask,
"Boys, have you got plenty of good wood for the storm'?" If Joshua had
the "rheumatics" or Melinda the "shaking ager," or little Jeff the
hives, there were ointments and liquids, pills and lotions; and what
physician was so kind; whose hands so soft and tender, whose voice so
comforting and sympathetic as "ole missis's and young missis's?" There
was the garden from which the negroes would market their vegetables;
there was the little "water million" patch where little Jeff and Susan
Ann would run out at midday, and thump and thump and thump and would as
often run back with their mouths wide-open like a rift in a black cloud,
"Mammy, oh! Mammy, dat great big water million is mo'est ripe--be ripe
by Sunday sho," and their little black feet would knock off a jig on the
bare floor; then there was the pig sty where Sukey the "sassy poker," in
its sleekness and fatness, would grunt and frisk and cavort all the day
long. Then there was "Ole Boatswain," the coon dog, lazily napping in
the door--barking at the treed coon in his sleep; then there were the
"tater ridges" and the pumpkins and the cotton patches; then there were
the cackling hens and the pullets, the ducks and geese and guinea-fowls;
the eggs that Hannah and Clarissa and Melinda had counted a score of
times, and knew to a four pence a' penny how much they would fetch in
the town; and "dere was de wagin wid ole Bob an' ole Pete wid pinted
yeares, chawin' de bit same as it were fodder, ready to dash off fore
dey wus ready;" and there were the inventoried assets in trade, "free
forfs Hanna's and two forfs Melinda's and seben forfs Clarissy's," all
tumbled in disorder, live stock and dead stock. And then "dere was
Melinda and Judy a settin' a middle ships into de wagin, all agwine to
de town." And when the heavy wheels would rattle with its human freight
over the hard ground of Ingleside, as the moon was dipping its nether
horn below the line of vision, and Clara Bell and Melinda "a singin' de
ole ship of Zion," "ole Marster an' Missis an' Miss Alice would run
outen de great house jes to see if Ned had fotched us all back safe an'
sound. An' den when Christmas would come, de ole turkey gobbler would be
turnin' an' twistin' roun' and roun' fore de fire drappin' gravy in de
dish, and de barbeku would be brownin' and de lasses a stewin out de
taters in great big ubbens, fo de flambergasted cookin' stobes cum about
to pester folkes. And den dere would be ole Cæsar a shufflin' towards
ole Marser's room, and little Jeff a sneakin' on tip-toe to ketch ole
Marser's Christmas gift fore he seed em, an' Mary an' Polly creepin'
like cats in Miss Alice's chamber, to get their stockins that Santy
Claus had stuffed from top to toe; and den de clatter in de great dinin'
room, when wid bowls of cream, and flagons of mellow ole rye, Clarissa
and Melindv would be makin' egg-nog fur de fokeses, white and cullud, on
de plantation."
Oh! this golden prime!
There were no black soldiers in greasy uniforms a hep, hep, hepping
about the plantation; no firing of guns by riotous negroes on the
roadside; no drunken, revelling wretches to slash and deface portraits,
walls and corridors; no lecherous villains to accost and abuse
defenceless and inoffensive women; no vigils to keep for fear of
murders, burglaries and conflagrations; no angry forces and energies to
quicken and compound; no wife to say to her husband, "Have you fotched
any wittles back from the conwenshun? 'Fore God de chillun haint had
narry moufful o' nuffin to eat dis blessed day, nor me nuther."
Ah, no! the blessing that was vouchsafed unto Israel, despite its
rebellion, was all bountiful in this land. "I will give thee peace in
the land, and ye shall lie down, and there shall be none to make thee
afraid."
Then war came with its unutterable horrors and tumults. The old tallow
candles were snuffed out, and there were fears and alarms in the mansion
and the cabin; the thoroughbred was brought out of the stable with
yellow housings on, like the gelding of a knight errant, and the young
soldier, dressed all in gray with buff revers, rushed out of the house
and vaulted into the saddle. There were kisses and good byes--lost
echoes now--as the cavalier, young and happy and handsome, rode away.
Yes, rode away in the descending shadows, over the hills, through the
glades, to Manassas and to death. Yes, rode away to the death
wrestle--to where the guns were spitting fire.
"Bress yo souls, fokeses," said Uncle Ned one day, as he leaned upon his
staff like a sheik of the desert, "I looks back now und den, und peers
lak I kin see ole missis way back yander in de war times, when de kannon
was a plowin' froo de trees ober at Manassy, same as a sho nuff
harrykin, und killin' a million of our federick soldiers at wun time. I
seed her und Miss Alice cum outen de grate house, a fairly toting Mars
Harry dat rainy day he rid off to de war, und Mars Harry he looked same
as a gineral in all dem stripes und fedders, und Nelly she wuz jest a
chompin' de bit und er pawin' de yurth lak she wuz moes afeerd de war
want er gwine to hole out twell she und Mars Harry got dar; und den ole
missis looked up in Mars Harry's face, und I seed her laf, do she wuz
crying tu, und den I heerd hur say, 'My brave boy, how kin I ever giv yu
up! Will yer git er furlow und cum home arter de battle? Und den Mars
Harry he larfed too, und den I heerd him say, 'Oh mother don't be
childish, I'm jest er gwine off fer my helth. I'm gwine to bring yer a
yankee sord when we whups em and drives um tuther side o' de Pokomuc
river.' Und den ole missis she put her pendence in every word Mars Harry
tole her, kase when he rid off I heerd her tell Miss Alice dat her boy
want agwine to be gone long, and dat de yankeys was agwine to give up
fore dey fit ary battle; but bimeby, when ole missus seed dat Mars Harry
mout not git a furlow, she jest gin herself up to die. All de day long
pore old missis would walk up und down de piazzy a peekin' froo de trees
und axin' me ef I spishioned he was gwine to git kilt, und den when she
heerd dat our fokeses had fit de battle of Manassy, me und ole missis
sot up all night long, jes a watchin' fer Mars Harry to ride back lak he
rid off; but no Mars Harry neber didn't come back twell one rainy,
grizzly night me und ole missis heerd a clatter down de road, und den we
heerd somebody say, 'Wo! und den a passel ov soldiers cum up to missis
easy like, and axed her if Mr. Seymo' lived dere; und when ole missis
heerd dat word und seed de kivered wagin, she jes drapped down into de
road dead. Pore ole missis! De soldiers took her up in dere arms und
toted her into de 'grate house,' und dere was her and pore Miss Alice
in hysteriks, and ole marser not a sayin' ary wurd but a chokin 'mos to
def; und den de soldiers went back to de kivered wagin', and I heered
'em a draggin' outen it a great big box, and I seed dem totin it to de
'grate house' jes as easy and slow, wid dere milinterry hats offen dere
heds in de rain, und den I node it was Mars Harry. When ole missis cum
to, she made de soldiers take de led offen de coffin, und dere was Mars
Harry a lyin' dere wid his eyes shot right tight, a smilin de
butifullest all to hissef. Ole missis sot dere all dat nite lak a grate
big statu, a runnin her fingers fru his hair an' a talkin' to him jes de
same as if Mars Harry had rid back frum de war lak he rid off. An' den
ole marsa he cum in und looked at Mars Harry a smilin' to hissef, an' I
could see ole marsa shake an' shake, but he didn't say narry a wurd, an'
he tuck Mars Harry's sord out of de coffin; den bimeby I heerd him say
he was agwine to venge his death. Ole missis soon pined erway, cause
Mars Harry was her eyeballs. I tells ye fokeses, dat was de most
solemcholly site I ever seed in my born days. Poor ole missis didn't
stay long arter Mars Harry died; she dun gon home too, an' I specks Mars
Harry dun tole ole missis all erbout de battle of Manassy, an' how he
fit an' how he got kilt; und erbout dat yankey sord he nebber didn't
fotch back."
To a paternal ancestor of Colonel John Walter Seymour has been ascribed
this prayer in battle, "Oh Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this
day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me." Then rising, he gave the
command, "Forward, march! On, my lads!"
At eight o'clock on the morning of the 23rd of October, King Charles was
riding along the ridge of Edgehill, and looking down into the valley of
the Red Horse, a beautiful meadow, broken here and there by hedges and
copses, he could see with his glasses the parliamentary army as they
marched out of the town of Kleinton and aligned their forces in battle
array.
"I never saw the rebels in a body before," said the king. "I will give
them battle here." There were hot words around the royal standard.
Rupert, a dashing young general, who had seen the swift, fiery charges
of the fierce troopers in the thirty years war, was backed up by Patrick
Lord Ruthven and Sir Walter Seymour, among the many Scots who had won
renown under the great Augustus Adolphus and opposed fiercely by Lord
Lindsey, an old comrade of the Earl of Essex, commander-in-chief of the
rebel forces, who swore by all the saints in the calendar that he would
not serve again in an army under a boy, referring to Prince Rupert, who
was assigned by the king to command the army at Edge Hill that day.
It was to this circumstance that the country was indebted for the prayer
aforesaid. The brave soldier, unyielding in his loyalty to the king,
resigned his command as a general to command his company, and in so
doing gave affront to Lord Lindsay and the king; but subsequently, at
Scone, the king said to him, "You shall accompany me to London as a
privy counsellor."
It was from this doughty ancestor of blessed memory that John Walter
Seymour lineally descended. I have seen the old corselets, shackbolts,
shields and trefoils of that chivalric era that belonged to the old
baronet. Colonel Seymour had interested himself greatly in the
literature of that institutional era that had so close a connection with
the pomp and power of the Feudal system. He spoke learnedly too of the
ideal purity of the social and moral code of the age.
The Colonel himself was no ignoble scion of so noble an ancestor. He
had won his spurs and stars at Malvern Hill, and at the disbanding of
the army he had covered the faded stars upon his collar with his pocket
handkerchief until unobserved he could pluck them one by one and trample
them underfoot. His haughty spirit could not brook the shame that
overlaid him like a shroud when his sword passed out of his hands hilt
foremost at Appomattox. He had taken the beautiful Alice Glendower from
a neighboring estate as his wife twenty-six years ago, and now in the
year 186-, though a shadow darkening and deepening lay athwart heart and
home, the old man was still muttering curses long, loud and deep. He had
fully assimilated the indignant spirit of Coriolanus. "I would they were
barbarians (as they are though in Rome littered), not Romans as they are
not though calved in the porch of the capitol." His only surviving child
Alice was now in her twenty-third year. Harry, a princely fellow, a
young lieutenant of cavalry, had fallen at the battle of Manassas and
ever since that day the mother had steadily declined until now the end
had almost come. The likeness of the dead boy was photographed vividly
upon her heart and every tender chord was ceaselessly vibrating from the
presence of a grief, that recreated fancies and memories that brought
back to her the vanished idol. God's peace had settled upon the old home
and its hearth stones, one beautiful Sabbath morning, as the Colonel,
his daughter and old Clarissa had assembled in Mrs. Seymours's bed
chamber. The light of the morning sun shimmered through open windows,
and the shadows of the tree boughs like imprisoned fairies danced in
cotilion upon the polished floor. "The birds are singing so sweetly
to-day," observed the sick lady.
"Yes indeed, they are," replied her husband.
"My dear," she said as she turned her face to him, "I have been greatly
troubled by a horrid dream."
"Land sakes alive ole missis," interrupted Clarissa, "don't yu pester
yoursef to def erbout dreams these outlandish times. Dey is bad enuff
goodness nose widout dreaming dreams. Ned he jumped clean outen de bed
tother nite hollering for his ole muskit lak he was agwine to war--his
eyes fairly a sot in his head lak a craw-fish and a tarryfying me to def
and hollering 'fire! fire!' and a foaming at the mouf lak a mad dog, und
duz yu know what I dun ole missis? when dat drotted nigger hollered
fire! fire! I jes retched ober de table an' got de pale of water an' I
put out dat fire fore Ned skovered whay hit war. Dat fool nigger walks
perpendikler, now yu heers my racket." She laughed again and again as
she continued: "And Ned he wanted to fight; he was most drounded."
There was little of sentiment and less of diplomacy in the character of
Colonel Seymour; though he was exceedingly tolerant toward Clarissa with
her little vagaries and superstitions. What the dream of the good lady
was has never been known--the narrative was rudely broken off by the
interruption of Clarissa.
Would you know sweet Alice more intimately? I cannot portray her as she
deserves; her heart was like so many little cells into which were
unceasingly dropping the honey of blue thistle blossoms of charity. In
every den of wretchedness; in every hovel where squalor and disease
disputed all other dominions, she was a beam of sunshine, giving warmth
and cheer and joy. The little star-eyed daisies in the meadow would turn
up their tiny faces to greet her with smiles as she would pass them day
after day with the little basket upon her arm; God had put her here
among these poor people--among the deluded negroes as his missionary,
and I am quite sure He was pleased with her work. I cannot describe her
beauty and grace of person better than in the natural and characteristic
language of Clarissa "Miss Alice," she would say, "Yu is the most
butifullest white gal I ever seed in de wurrel; yer cheek is jes lak
mellow wine-sop apples, und yer eyes is blu und bright lak agate
marbles, und yer teeth as white as de dribben snow, und when yer laffs,
pen pon it, even de birds in de trees stops to lisen; und yu is jes as
suple und spry as de clown in de show."
Golden tresses like a nimbus of glory adorned her queenly head. Eyes of
blue graduated to the softest tint; cheeks that transfered the deep
blush from tender spring blossoms. Something in her there was that set
you to thinking of those "strange back-grounds of Raphael--that hectic
and deep brief twilight in which Southern suns fall asleep." With Alice
in her presence, Clarissa felt no evil; when the storm came with
blinding fire, its fierce thunders, her refuge was by her side. She was
her inspiration, her providence. The gentle hand upon the hot brow and
there came relief; an old fashioned lullaby from her sweet lips and the
fevered pickaninny in the cradle would turn upon his side and fall into
a grateful slumber. A prayer spoken out of a heart touched by pity or
sorrow, and instantly another heart would be uplifted in thanksgiving.
She exercised too a power over the freed slaves that made captive to her
will almost all the stubborn and rebellious negroes. Old Ned would have
plucked out his eyes for her and cast them at her feet; so would
Clarissa, so would Clarabel; so would old Caesar and Hannah and Joshua.
Only these rebelled against her influence, to wit: Aleck, Miles and
Ephraim. Clarissa would say to her young mistress so inquisitively,
"Miss Alice, why don't yu git married? Peers like child yer is too
sweet and pretty to live allus by yer lone, lorn self. Yer aint allers
gwine to be 'ticin an butiful like yer is now. By and by de crow's foot
is agwine to cum into yer lubly face and dere is gwine to be kurlikus
and frowns in yo eyes jes lak yo mammy's; she used to be pretty und
lubly jes' lak you, and whar is she now? De boys aint gwine to brak
their necks over you when yer gets ole an' ugly, nuther. Now dey is lak
a passel ov yallow jackets a swarmin' a-roun my house, and axin me dis
ting an' tuther ting about dare sweetheart, and bress yo dear life I has
to keep a patchin' up de fence whar dey climbs ober to keep de horgs an'
cattle beastes out o de crap. Dey is afraid to cum to de 'grate house;'
skeert of yu an' ole marser. Ole Mars John aint gwine to be here allus,
nuther; see how cranksided he is gettin' an' so ill an' contrawy that
we das'nt projec' wid him no mo; an' whar wud yu be chile in dis grate,
big house und dis grate big plantashun wid de cussed niggers a marchin'
an' a beatin' drums an' a shootin' guns lak ole Sherman's army, treadin'
down de corn an' 'taters und a momickin' up de chickins und de sheepses
und de cattle beastes? 'Taint agwine to do nohow. Dat it aint. I kin
count fourteen portly yung 'uns dat wud jump clean akross de crick fer
yer any hour God sends."
Alice could only silently hearken to the force of such plain,
matter-of-fact reasoning, but poor girl, there was not a single niche in
her heart into which she could lift an idol. Within the shrine there
were nothing but soulless effigies, so faded and old and lifeless that
they recalled only battle-fields and sepulchres. "Will her prince never
come, into whose eyes she can see mirrored her own self, her soul in its
beauty, love and happiness?" Do you ask? There is a medallion that hangs
by a golden chain across her fair bosom. "How long had she worn it
there," think you? Ever since
"She was a child and he was a child,
In his kingdom by the sea;
When she loved with a love that was more than love,
Alice and Arthur McRae."