THE time of the singing of birds and the departure of winter came
suddenly that year. Hyacinths were aglow in my mother’s front yard
early in February, and the orchards were aflame with “the fiery
blossoms of the peach.” The earth awoke from sleep with a bound, and
human creatures thrilled, as at the presage of great events.
It was the year of the presidential election and a campaign of
extraordinary importance. My father talked to me of what invested it
with this importance as we walked together down the street one morning
when the smell of open flowers and budding foliage was sweet in our
nostrils.
A Democratic barbecue was to be held in a field on the outskirts of the
village just beyond “Jordan’s Creek.” The stream took its name from the
man whose plantation bounded it on the west. The widening and deepening
into a pool at the foot of his garden made it memorable in the Baptist
Church.
I do not believe there was a negro communicant in any other
denomination throughout the length of the county. And their favorite
baptizing-place was “Jordan’s Creek.” I never knew why, until my
mother’s maid—a bright mulatto, with a smart cross of Indian blood in
her veins—“got through,” after mighty strivings on her part, and on the
part of the faithful of her own class and complexion, and confided to
me her complacency in the thought that she was now safe for time and
eternity.
“For, you see, John the Babtis’, he babtized in the River Jerdan, and
Brother Watkins, he babtized me in the Creek Jerdan. I s’pose they must
be some kin to one another?”
My father laughed and then sighed over the story, when I told it as we
set out on our walk. The religious beliefs and superstitions of the
colored servants were respected by their owners to a degree those who
know little of the system as it prevailed at that time, find it hard to
believe. From babyhood we were taught never to speak disrespectfully
of the Baptists, or of the vagaries that passed with the negroes for
revealed truth. They had a right to their creeds as truly as we had to
ours.
This younger generation is also incredulous with respect to another
fact connected with our domestic relations. Children were trained in
respectful speech to elderly servants—indeed, to all who were grown men
and women. My mother made me apologize once to this same maid—Mary Anne
by name—for telling her to “Hush her mouth!” the old Virginian form of
“Hold your tongue!”
The blesséd woman explained the cause of her reproof when the maid was
out of hearing:
“The expression is unladylike and coarse. Then, again, it is
_mean_—despicably mean!—to be saucy to one who has no right to answer
in the same way. If you must be sharp in your talk, quarrel with your
equals, not with servants, who cannot meet you on your own ground.”
The admonition has stuck fast in my mind to this day.
By the time we turned the corner in the direction of Jordan’s Creek,
my father and I were deep in politics. He was the stanchest of Whigs,
and the ancient and honorable party had for leader, in this year’s
fight, one whom my instructor held to be the wisest statesman and
purest patriot in the land. The ticket, “Clay and Frelinghuysen,” was a
beloved household word with us; talk of the tariff, protection and the
national debt, which Henry Clay’s policy would wipe out, and forever,
if opportunity were granted to him, ran as glibly from our childish
tongues as dissertations upon the Catholic bill and parliamentary
action thereupon dropped from the lips of the Brontë boy and girls.
There was not a shadow of doubt in our minds as to the result of the
November fight.
“It seems a pity”—I observed, as we looked across the creek down into
the distant meadow, where men and boys were moving to and fro, and
smoke was rising from fires that had been kindled overnight—“that the
Democrats should go to so much expense and trouble only to be defeated
at last.”
“They may not be so sure as you are that they are working for nothing,”
answered my father, smiling good-humoredly. “They have had some
victories to boast of in the past.”
“Yes!” I assented, reluctantly. “As, for instance, when Colonel Hopkins
was sent to the Legislature! Father, I wish you had agreed to go when
they begged you to let them elect you!”
The smile was now a laugh.
“To nominate me, you mean. A very different matter from election, my
daughter. Not that I cared for either. If I may be instrumental in the
hands of Providence in helping to put the right man into the right
place, my political ambitions will be satisfied.”
“I do hope that Powhatan will go for Clay!” ejaculated I, fervently.
“And I think it an outrage that the Richmond voters cannot come up to
the help of the right, at the presidential election.”
“The law holds that the real strength of the several states would not
be properly represented if this were allowed,” was the reply.
I saw the justice of the law later in life. Then it was oppressive, to
my imagination.
That most doubtful blessing of enlightened freemen—universal
suffrage—had not as yet been thrust upon the voters of the United
States. In Virginia, the man who held the franchise must not only be
“free, white, and twenty-one,” but he must be a land-owner to the
amount of at least twenty-five dollars. Any free white of the masculine
gender owning twenty-five dollars’ worth of real estate in any county
had a vote there. If he owned lands of like value in ten counties,
he might deposit a vote in each of them, if he could reach them all
between sunrise and sunset on Election Day. It was esteemed a duty by
the Richmond voter—the city being overwhelmingly Whig—to distribute his
influence among doubtful counties in which he was a property-holder.
He held and believed for certain that he had a right to protect his
interests wherever they might lie.
Powhatan was a doubtful factor in the addition of election returns.
Witness the election to the Legislature at different periods of such
Democrats as Major Jacob Michaux—from a James River plantation held by
his grandfather by a royal grant since the Huguenots sought refuge in
Virginia from French persecutors—and of the Colonel Hopkins whom I had
named. This last was personally popular, a man of pleasing address and
fair oratorical powers, and represented an influential neighborhood
in the centre of the county. A most worthy gentleman, as I now know.
Then I classed him with Jesuits and tyrants. I had overheard a sanguine
Democrat declare in the heat of political argument that “Henry L.
Hopkins would be President of the United States some day.” To which my
father retorted, “When that day comes I shall cross the ocean and swear
allegiance to Queen Victoria.”
When I repeated the direful threat to my mother, she laughed and bade
me give myself no uneasiness on the subject, as nothing was more
unlikely than that Colonel Hopkins would ever go to the White House.
Nevertheless, I always associated that amiable and courtly gentleman
with our probable expatriation.
Election Day was ever an event of moment with us children. From
the time when I was tall enough to peep over the vine-draped
garden-fence—until I was reckoned too big to stand and stare in so
public a place, and was allowed to join the seniors who watched the
street from behind the blinds and between the sprays of the climbing
roses shading the front windows—it was my delight to inspect and
pronounce upon the groups that filled the highway all day long.
Children are violent partisans, and we separated the sheep from the
goats—_id est_, the Whigs from the Democrats—as soon as the horsemen
became visible through the floating yellow dust of the roads running
from each end of the street back into the country. One neighborhood
in the lower end of the county, bordering upon Chesterfield, was
familiarly known as the “Yellow Jacket region.” It took its name,
according to popular belief, from the butternut and nankeen stuffs that
were worn by men and women. The term had a sinister meaning to us,
although it was sufficiently explained by the costume of the voters,
who seldom appeared at the Court House in force except upon Election
Day. They arrived early in the forenoon—a straggling procession of
sad-faced citizens, or so we fancied—saying little to one another, and
looking neither to the left nor the right as their sorrel nags paced up
the middle of the wide, irregularly built street. I did not understand
then, nor do I now, their preference for sorrel horses. Certain it is
that there were four of that depressing hue to one black, bay, or gray.
So badly groomed were the poor beasts, and so baggy were the nankeen
trousers of the men who bestrode them, that a second look was needed
to determine where the rider ended and the steed began. We noted, with
disdainful glee, that the Yellow Jacket folk turned the corner of the
crossway flanking our garden, and so around the back of the public
square enclosing Court House, clerk’s office, and jail. There they
tethered the sorry beasts to the fence, shook down a peck or so of oats
from bags they had fastened behind their saddles, and shambled into the
square to be lost in the gathering crowd.
As they rode through the village, ill-mannered boys chanted:
“Democrats—
They eat rats!
But Whigs
Eat pigs!”
Bacon being a product for which the state was famed, the distinction
was invidious to the last degree. My mother never let us take up the
scandalous doggerel. She said it was vulgar, untrue, and unkind. It was
not her fault that each of us had the private belief that there was a
spice of truth in it.
When we saw a smart tilbury, drawn by a pair of glossy horses, stop
before the “Bell Tavern” opposite our house, the occupants spring to
the ground and leave the equipage to the hostlers—who rushed from the
stables at sound of the clanging bell pulled by the landlord as soon as
he caught sight of the carriage—we said in unison:
“They are Whigs!”
We were as positive as to the politics of the men who rode blooded
hunters and wore broadcloth and tall, shining hats. The Yellow Jacket
head-gear was drab in color, uncertain in shape.
It seemed monstrous to our intolerant youth that “poor white folksy”
men should have an equal right with gentlemen, born and bred, in
deciding who should represent the county in the Legislature and the
district in Congress.
The crowning excitement of the occasion was reserved for the afternoon.
As early as three o’clock I was used to see my father come out of the
door of his counting-room over the way, watch in hand, and look down
the Richmond road. Presently he would be joined there by one, two, or
three others, and they compared timepieces, looking up at the westering
sun, their faces graver and gestures more energetic as the minutes sped
by. The junta of women sympathizers behind the vine-curtains began to
speculate as to the possibility of accident to man, beast, or carriage,
and we children inquired, anxiously, “What would happen if the Richmond
voters did not come, after all?”
“No fear of that!” we were assured, our mother adding, with modest
pride, “Your father has attended to the matter.”
They always came. Generally the cloud of distant dust, looming
high and fast upon the wooded horizon, was the first signal of the
reinforcements for the Whig party. Through this we soon made out a
train of ten or twelve carriages, and perhaps as many horsemen—a
triumphal cortége that rolled and caracoled up the street amid the
cheers of expectant fellow-voters and of impartial urchins, glad of any
chance to hurrah for anybody. The most important figure to me in the
scene was my father, as with feigned composure he walked slowly to the
head of the front steps, and lifted his hat in courteous acknowledgment
of the hands and hats waved to him from carriage and saddle-bow. If I
thought of Alexander, Napoleon, and Washington, I am not ashamed to
recollect it now.
That child has been defrauded who has not had a hero in his own home.
I was at no loss to know who mine was, on this bland spring morning, as
my father and I leaned on a fence on the hither side of the creek and
watched the proceedings of the cooks and managers about the _al fresco_
kitchen.
“Too many cooks spoil the dinner!” quoth I, as negroes bustled from
fire to fire, and white men yelled their orders and counter-orders.
“Not that it matters much what kind of victuals are served at a
Democratic barbecue, so long as there is plenty to drink.”
“Easy, easy, daughter!” smiled my auditor. “There are good men and true
in the other party. We are in danger of forgetting that.”
“None as good and great as Mr. Clay, father?”
He raised his hat slightly and involuntarily. “I do not think he has
his equal as man and pure patriot in this, or any other country. God
defend the right!”
“You are not afraid lest _Polk_”—drawling the monosyllable in
derision—“will beat him, father?”
The smile was a laugh—happily confident.
“Hardly! I have more faith in human nature and in the common-sense of
the American people than to think that they will pass over glorious
Harry of the West, and forget his distinguished services to the nation,
to set in the presidential chair an obscure demagogue who has done
nothing. Wouldn’t you like to go down there and see half an ox roasted,
and a whole sheep?”
We crossed the stream upon a shaking plank laid from bank to bank, and
strolled down the slope to the scene of operations. An immense kettle
was swung over a fire of logs that were so many living coals. The smell
of Brunswick stew had been wafted to us while we leaned on the fence. A
young man, who had the reputation of being an epicure, to the best of
his knowledge and ability, superintended the manufacture of the famous
delicacy.
“Two dozen chickens went into it!” he assured us. “They wanted to make
me think it couldn’t be made without green corn and fresh tomatoes.
I knew a trick worth two of that. I have worked it before with dried
tomatoes and dried sweet corn soaked overnight.”
He smacked his lips and winked fatuously.
“I’ve great confidence in your culinary skill,” was the good-natured
rejoinder.