"A DANIEL COME TO JUDGMENT."
The Reconstruction period in the South was offensively institutional.
There was a fascination about the spoils principle, the "cohesive power
of public plunder" that allured all conditions of men who put themselves
in juxtaposition to the new order of things. There was not a negro who
valued his manhood suffrage that did not yield implicit faith and
obedience to all that was told him by the carpet-baggers, who came south
as the "waves come when navies are stranded." The elective judiciary too
was no mean accessory in the wholesale plunder of the people; in the
sale, delay and denial of justice. The presence of the judge in the
county town to hold the court was, an event that was commonly
distinguished by farcical displays; exhibitions as it were of
harlequins, bazaars, organ-grinders and negroes. From the four quarters
of the county exhausted mules and oxen were brought into requisition and
hitched to primitive vehicles; negroes who were the worthless heads of
pauper families, astride the bare backs of horned cattle, arriving in
the town before the break of day and thronging the public buildings,
thoroughfares and court house. The leaders among the negroes would call
upon the judge in his chamber with a disgusting obsequiousness that
marked the depravity of their origin. Punishments at times were the
refinement of oppression and as often a mockery of the law. Partisan
judgments were not unusual or surprising.
An untried judge had come to hold the assizes; he had come without the
blast of a trumpet, but the compact assemblage awaited with every
demonstration of joy his presence upon the bench. The judge was a young
man, seemingly of great intellectual reserve, possessing a steel gray
eye that shot its glances through the subject as if it were but marking
a point through which his judgment of a man would enter. There were
courage, self poise, wisdom, integrity apparent in the man who had
arrived to administer the law. For the first time this judicial officer
saw before him an indistinguishable mass of the freedmen of the south.
He knew by intuition that they were ignorant, vicious and corruptible;
he saw that the prosecuting attorney was a negro, the deputies of the
sheriff were negroes, the foreman of the grand jury was a negro and
doubtless he addressed to himself this interrogatory in the law latin
_cui bono_?
"There were indictments almost without number for frauds, embezzlements
and forgeries; the travail of reconstruction."
Laflin had been perniciously active all the morning. Before the judge
had taken his seat upon the bench, he had interviewed many of the men
who had been summoned upon the venire to try a veteran of the lost cause
for murder and their pockets were filled with small bribes. He had
checked off twelve names and given the list to the solicitor with the
heartless remark "Now we'll hang the old secesh higher than Haman, and
you and I Mr. Solicitor will divide between us his homestead." At this
point of time an interruption came from one of the negro jurors to this
effect, "Boss dere's wun secesh nigger dat sez he's agwine to hang de
jurer epseps yu gin him wun mo dollar."
"Blast the wretch!" came the curse of this man of baleful power, "Where
is he?" he enquired.
"See dat man standin dere ergin dat postess, dats him."
"Here you fellow," said Laflin, "How much money have you been paid to
find the old secesh guilty?"
The negro in an abstracted way felt in his pockets and told the wretch
that one juror had been paid two dollars, while he had received only one
dollar, "und he mout conwic de rong man, den yu see boss, de pay mout
not be ekal to de sponuality. Fling in wun mo dollar und de jurer gwine
to hang dat secesh sho."
This conclave of diabolical spirits was held in the office of the
sheriff at the hour of 9 a. m. Back yonder in the common jail, behind
the fretted bars, was the veteran in the cell with black felons.
Why should the catalogue of this poor man's misfortune be enlarged, by
super-adding to the loss of domestic tranquility, that greatest of all
calamities, the loss of his liberty, aggravated by the imputation of
crime and its consequent ignominy. He feels that the storm without is
fraught with lightning, that renders desolate the face of nature, his
mind has lost its elasticity, its spring, its pride; and who is the
prisoner, whom the black crowd follow with the gaping vacuity of vulgar
ignorance, assaulting him now and again with obscene gibes, as he is led
from the cell to the dock? He is gifted by the God of nature with rare
endowments, whose unconquered spirit breaks forth in a sentiment such as
this,
"Let the hangman lead these miscreants to the gibbet,
And let the ravens of the air
Fatten upon their flesh until they pick each tainted carcass from
the bones."
There were indictments also for capital felonies, and in the dock sat
three hardened black criminals, and one aged white man of distinguished
presence, who was whispering now and then to a beautiful maiden in
tears, a maiden so radiant in personal attractions that she might have
sat approvingly for the portrait of Beatrice Cenci that looks down upon
the upturned faces in the Art Gallery in Florence. He was a veteran of
the civil war; a hero at Malvern Hill; colonel commanding the regiment
of cavalry that by an extra hazardous maneuver drove a Federal brigade
into the death trap. By his side sat as his attorney a white-haired
gentleman, who like a stately man of war, just going out of commission,
was sighting his guns upon the enemy for the last time. This spectacle
was so full of the pathos of human life that it deserves to be
perpetuated in the memory, after the dry rot shall have utterly
honey-combed the odious system of reconstruction. The arraignment of the
prisoner was proceeded with; the negro solicitor presuming upon the
hearty co-operation of the judge ventilated his spleen upon the
unfortunate prisoner.
"Stand up, prisoner at the bar," he commanded as he fairly spat his
venom like a jungle serpent into the face of the poor man. "Are you
guilty or not guilty of the felony and murder with which you stand
charged?" he cried.
"Not Guilty," answered the prisoner with a quiet dignity.
"By whom will you be tried," the officer inquired wrathfully.
"By God and my country," was the answer of this veteran of a hundred
battles; this wise counsellor of the law.
Were the twelve black jurors in the box his country? had they ever given
direction to his impulses as a patriot? had they ever nerved his arm to
strike down the foe, that scourged his home into barrenness and peopled
the city of the dead with his kindred? Had they like Joshua and Hur ever
stayed the hand of the prisoner, when with drawn sword he guarded the
portal of the temple? Great God! Shall these human chattels, without a
single intellectual resource, without one ray of discernment, besotted
and bedraggled by fanaticism, superstition and ignorance bring to this
poor man in this extremity a safe deliverance? In conducting the
prosecution, in the examination of the witnesses the same brutish
treatment was observed by the solicitor for the state toward the aged
prisoner, and with an offensive parade of authority he announced that
the state had closed its case; thereupon the white-haired Governor arose
to ask for the discharge of the prisoner for want of sufficient evidence
to convict. Now came the first interruption upon the part of the judge,
who up to this moment had observed a reticence quite noteworthy in a
high judicial officer who was holding his first court where the negroes
ruled.
"It is unnecessary Governor that I should hear you," he remarked with
evident self-poise.
Turning to the solicitor he asked with deliberation,
"Can you tell me how the indictment against this old man found its way
into this court?"
"I can, sir," the solicitor impudently replied, "and I propose," he
exclaimed vehemently, "to make good the charge by convicting this
assassin before this conscientious jury."
"Ah, indeed!" rejoined the judge quite complacently. "Are you quite sure
of your premises?"
"Yes indeed!" replied the solicitor.
"Take your seat, sir," the judge commanded, with a frown upon his
intelligent face. "I am informed," said he, addressing the negro
solicitor, "that you have been perniciously active in the persecution of
this feeble old man; that you have gone out of your way to harass and
humiliate him in all possible situations; that you have advised and
encouraged and rewarded placable agents and emissaries to render his
life burdensome and his condition intolerable; that you have caused
inquisitorial visits to be made to his home by ruffianly negroes in the
dead hours of the night; that you have conspired and confederated with a
loathsome being--a man, however, of controlling influence with the
negroes--by the name of Laflin, to inflict upon him and his daughter
every indignity your evil imagination could suggest; that acting under
your devilish advice and inventions, lawless, brutish negroes have set
at defiance every dictate of humanity, every precept of religion, and
every commandment of the law, and have turned his home into a hell; that
when a superficial examination into this case would have shown you that
this negro, whom you say was murdered by this unfortunate prisoner
gathered around him a bestial mob of the most despicable, offensive
negroes, armed with guns and swords to take his life by force of
insurrectionary combinations, you dare to clutch the ermine of this
court with your defiled fingers! You have disgraced the position you
occupy; your right to prosecute the criminal docket in this court is
suspended. You will take your seat in the prisoner's dock until I can
have you tried and sentenced to the penitentiary. This man is in your
custody, Mr. Sheriff. Mr. Clerk, you will at once issue a bench warrant
for the arrest of Abram Laflin and the coroner, Jackson Thorp, and have
them brought before me at once. Colonel Seymour," he continued,
addressing the prisoner, and at the same time extending his hand, "you
have my sympathy. I have observed with pain and indignation the alarming
condition of affairs in your county. I am sitting upon this bench as a
judge to discharge my duty in the fear of God. You are fully vindicated,
sir, and may retire when you please."
A stampede of negroes who had thronged the court room swept away every
obstruction, and within one hour after the arrest of the carpet-bagger
and the coroner, mules, oxen, negroes, dogs and organs and monkeys were
in precipitate flight through the town.
"Grate Jerusalem!" exclaimed an old negro who had fallen down the
stairway in his flight, "de debbil has sho broke loose in dis hear
town. Dat ar jedge is wusser dan a harrykane."
The scene that followed was intensely dramatic. Men who had never been
demonstrative before, at the hour of recess, thronged the judge to thank
him for his honesty and courage in this hour of trial. The Governor,
Colonel Seymour and his beautiful daughter awaited the presence of the
judge in the parlor of the public inn, and as the learned man entered
the room greatly embarrassed, Alice thought he was the manliest man she
ever saw--faultlessly handsome, with the poise of a patrician. The judge
took her extended hand, and blushing deeply, looked down into the
lustrous blue eyes that were laughing through tears and said, almost
audibly, to himself, "Is it possible that this beauty will ever fade?"
Could we introspect the great man's heart, we should find even then a
little weaver picking up here and there golden threads and
cris-crossing them into entangling meshes; and perhaps a little archer
was drawing back his bow to transfix two hearts and hold them up before
him while he laughed and laughed again at his conquest.
"Miss Seymour," the judge exclaimed, quite compassionately, "I regret
that your father has been so greatly outraged. I hope he will soon
forget it and that his life will be happy. I am grateful to you for the
pleasure of this visit. May I hope to see you at your home in the
country?"
Alice replied, both weeping and smiling, that she could never repay the
debt of gratitude.
"I feel that there is not now a cloud upon my little horizon--that your
considerate judgment has dispelled the shadows that veiled in my life,
and I shall live now for my father and his happiness."
"Ah, my dear miss!" replied the judge, somewhat confused, "do not thank
me for doing my duty. You don't know how my heart yearned towards your
helpless father in the hands of these barbarians." And all the while the
little archer, now an imprisoned eaves-dropper, was peeping out of the
curtains with his chubby hand to his tiny ear and whispering, "Love at
first sight."
Joshua was a unit in this compact mass of freedmen that squatted here
and there upon rude benches and crowded the aisles in that great
auditorium of negroes. There were snow-white dishevelled locks under
primitive hats and bonnets; there were hollow cheeks and lack lustre
eyes; there were hungry stomachs, limbs palsied and stiffened here in
the very May day of reconstruction. The commissariat with its great
reservoirs of fatness was ever so far away, and its approaches were
guarded by armed freedmen who like bearded pards demanded money. "Old
Glory" too, hung inert from the flag staff, blushing perhaps because the
judge is sitting upon the bench to despatch business; because a Daniel
has come to judge Laflin and to give him his pound of flesh without
blood. As the colonel was assisting his daughter into the buggy, after
the tumult was over, Joshua ambled up to him with his battered beaver in
his hand with fulsome congratulations.
"I knowed all de time ole marser dat yu was agwine to get clar. I seed
it in dat jedge's eyes when he heered dat ditement red. He got wexed dat
ar minit, und shuck his hed und I knowed den dat de state had flung de
fat in de farr, und I said to mysef, Joshaway, yu und ole marser is
agwine home wid wun anuder dis werry nite und it cum out lak I
spishuned."
"Uncle Joshua," interrupted Alice feelingly, "father and I are very
grateful for your kindness and you shall never suffer as long as we
live. Here is a dollar; buy Aunt Hannah what she needs, remember, you
must not buy whiskey with it."
"Tank yu yung missis, tank yu a fousand times. I am gwine to lay dis out
for Hannah. I aint agwine to tech narry cent of it, und when dat nigger
sees me coming home with all my bundles she is agwine to jump clean clar
outen her skin. I don't care ef I nebber sees dat kommissary no mo," and
in the transport of joy the old negro tossed his old beaver high into
the air while he lustily cried out, "free cheers for Miss Alice und ole
marser."
There were many things that pre-occupied the minds of Alice and her
father as they were driving home. The old man in a sentimental spirit
felt like exclaiming with the sacred writer "These, and such as these
are spots in our feasts of charity; clouds they are without water,
trees whose fruit withereth; raging waves of the sea foaming out their
own shame; wandering stars to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness
forever."
As they neared the old homestead, Clarissa was standing in the gateway,
jumping up and down automatically with arms tossing like the fans of a
Dutch windmill, shouting frantically, "glory, glory, the dead has cum to
life agin, blessed Lord de insurreckshun has done und riz agen.
Jurusulum my happy home" and she threw her arms around her young
mistress and in the excess of feeling hugged even the old hound. "Come in
to de kitchen ole marser und Miss Alice fur de lans sake und see what a
snipshus dinner I has got, barbecue, taters and chicken and homily und
sich lak."
Joshua stood in the road to watch his ole marser fast disappearing in
the distance; then taking the crisp note from the lining of his old hat,
brandished it aloft as if it were 'old glory.' It was the first currency
of the kind he had ever seen, for the coroner had refused to pay his per
diem as a juror at the inquest, averring as an excuse therefor dat dat
wote was agin de consecushon und hit jam nigh spiled de hole werdict.
Joshua steadied himself against an empty whisky barrel and began to
calculate as to the purchasing capacity of the dollar note.
"Now lem me count on de tip eend of the fingers scusing de fumb dat
don't count," said he. "Hanner she wants a kote und a par of brogans,
allus awanting mo dan de munny is agwine to fetch," he observed
parenthetically, "und den dare is me, bleeged to have a weskote und
gallusses, und dat will take every bit und grane; und how is I agwine
to git eny bakker, und I'm bleeged to have a drap of sperrits. Now lem
me count over gin und git dis ole fumb outen de way; de kote is fifty
cents und de shoes is seventy five cents, dat won't do," he said as he
scratched his head, "I'm gwine to leabe off de kote; den dere is de
shoes seventy-five cents, und de weskote seventy-five cents; dat won't
do nudder. I'm agwine to leabe off de shoes; den dare is de gallusses
twenty-five cents, und de weskote seventy-five cents; den whar is de
bakker? I'm agwine to lebe off de weskote; den dare is de gallusses
twenty-five cents, und de bakker twenty-five cents, und de sperrits
fifty cents; de munny haint ergwine to hole out no udder way I can fix
it; now den de sperrits fust, und de bakker nex und gallusses las," and
when the old negro had solved the problem he struck a bee line to the
nearest groggery, saying to himself, "Ef Miss Alice had axed me not to
buy no sperrits I'd a been kotched pine plank."
"Two years in the penitentiary," Joshua heard some one exclaim as he was
passing the court house.
"Who dat boss gwine to de penitenshur?" he stopped to enquire.
"Abram Laflin," came the answer.
"Don't you heer dat!" exclaimed Joshua, "Fredum is sho gin out now.
Ellic dun und gon und got hissef drounded, und on de tip eend of dat de
boss is dun und got hissef in de penitenshur. Land sakes alive! Niggers
got to walk perpendickkler now," and with that the old negro dodged into
the tippling shop.
"Say boss?" Joshua said to the rum-seller, "Fill me a tickler rite full
er rum; don't put narry drap of whiskey in hit, kase ef yu dus my
creddick is dun und gon fur ebber. Now what dus I have to pay?" he asked
as he put the bottle into his haversack.
"Seventy-five cents," sharply answered the salesman.
"My King!" ejaculated Joshua, "Den what is I gwine to do about dem
gallusses?"
"Come old negro," the clerk crustily replied, "get out and let that man
come to the counter."
As Joshua was moving suspiciously out of the dram shop he glanced
savagely at the man and said to himself, "Dis heer low down white trash
is a gwine to be de ruinashun ob dis kentry yit, agougging de werry
eyeballs out ob yer hed, und yu are standin rite dare urseein dem do
hit. I wishes dat dar jedge wud git holt ob dese speretual shops und
squashes dem lak he dun dat ditement agin ole marser."
In the small hours of the night Joshua stumbled against the door of his
cabin crying like a lunatic.
"Fer de lan sake Hanner, run out here und kill dese heer snakes, und
fetch my muskit along wid yu."
And Hannah in her night robes ran out frantically crying, "Show me dem
dar sarpents, whar is dey Joshaway?"
"Dar dey go," said he, and seizing the musket he banged away at the
earth exclaiming, "Ef yu is sho naff snakes yu is in a bad fix und ef yu
aint sho nuff snakes den I's in a wusser wun."
"Yu stracted fool," angrily shouted Hannah, "Yu is got de lerium
tremenjous, dat's what ails yu."