THE OPINIONS OF CALVIN BLOUNT
It was nearly noon of the following day before Colonel Calvin
Blount, in response to the summons of Eddring, presented himself at
the office of the latter. He was Calvin Blount grown still more gaunt
and gray and grizzled, though his eye lacked nothing of its
accustomed fire. He seated himself, and cast one long leg across the
other, as he threw his hat into a chair, in response to Eddring's
invitation.
"First," said Eddring, "tell me about yourself. It has been quite a
while since I've been down at your place, hasn't it?"
"Well, as to the place," replied Blount, "it's pretty much gone to
pieces. You know my idea is that the chief end of man is to go b'ah
hunting, and he oughtn't to be guilty of contributory negligence by
staying at home too much. There's been no one to run the place, and I
haven't cared. Least said about it, the best, I reckon."
"Who is your housekeeper now?" asked Eddring.
"No one, unless you call it that girl Delphine that used to work for
Mrs. Ellison. She came back there a while ago, and said she hadn't
any place to live, and wanted to go to work, so I told her to take
hold. I don't care. I've been livin' out in the woods most of the
time. There's more b'ahs now than you ever did see. You ought to come
down and have a hunt. The high water has driven 'em all up to the
ridges, and we can just get all of 'em we want."
"Well, I like to hunt once in a while," said Eddring, placing the
tips of his fingers together judicially, "but, you see, I'm a poor
man, and I have to do a little work once in a while, Now, you've got
that big plantation of yours--"
"Plantation!" snorted Blount; "yes, about half my fields are grown up
in sassafras brush. I rented out a thousand acres to the best niggers
I had, and I give 'em mules and machinery and a stake at the store,
and I told 'em to go ahead, and we'd split even at the end of the
year. It's no use. I've got to begin all over again, the same as I
did when I first started in there. It don't take long for that
country to slide back into brush, if you don't keep after it. It
would be cane and sassafras and cat briers all over to-day, so far as
the niggers are concerned. Why, man, if you opened the gates of
Heaven and showed them to Mr. Nigger, yon couldn't get him in, unless
you kicked him in."
"You don't seem exactly in accord with the modern idea of uplifting
the colored race, this morning, do you, Colonel?"
"No, I don't. Now, I wish our friends from the North would do one of
two things, either leave Mr. Nigger alone, or else take him up North,
and live with him themselves. You know what happened down at my place
last month?"
"No, anything new?"
"No, nothing _new,_ only another one of them investigatin' parties
from up North. They had a good fat new educator, half-nigger,
half-white, this time--educated a heap more'n I am. He was the king
bee in that lot of evangelizers and elevators. Well, I took them out
over my farms and showed them the sassafras shoots coming up where
the cotton ought to be. 'Gentlemen,' said I, 'here's an instance of
what an intelligent and industrious race can do. Here's the best
plantation in the Delta turned over to these people to make or break.
This is the richest soil in the world. They had half of all they
could raise, and they had their living guaranteed them. Nobody
guarantees _me_ a living, not even God A'mighty. They didn't put
up a dollar, nor an ounce of brains, nor a bit of worry. Now, did
they work, or did they sit in the shade and loaf? You look around and
tell me.'
"The big half-white man began to preach to me, and I says to him,
'Before you go on, I just want to ask you two questions. First, how
much of you is nigger, and how much is white? Second, do you want to
quit running a college up North, and come down here and take hold of
this plantation, and so help out three hundred fellow-citizens of
yours who are a heap more interested in the nigger question than you
are yourself?' I asked that fellow that. That's when he shrunk some."
Eddring smiled, but it was a serious smile, for the South has small
inclination to jest over questions such as these.
"Well, about all the fellow could do was to fall back on his old song
about education uplifting the race. 'That's all right,' I said to
him. 'I'll pay my share of that. But we've got to wait until your
millennium comes. It's no use saying it has come, when it hasn't.
It's going to take a long time before you get the real useful
educating done.'
"I got riled, talking to him, and at last I called up one of my field
hands--he had ruined twenty acres of the best cotton land I had--and
I took him by the ear and pulled out a bunch of his hair. Said I to
him, 'Sam, is your hair like mine! Would it ever get like mine?'
'No, boss,' said he, 'not in a hundred yeahs.' He laughed at me.
"Then I said to that white fellow from the North, 'How hard do you
work? I want to know that.' He began to swell up a little at that.
Well, I put it to him this way. Says I, 'There was a man came down
through here a few years ago, and he got plumb rich. He told all
these poor black people all around that for fifty cents he'd sell
them a bottle of stuff that would make their hair straight like a
white man's, in less'n a month. He always put it about a month ahead,
so that he'd have time to get away. Now, that hair tonic man was what
I call a professional benefactor of the nigger race,' said I. 'He got
paid for it, just the same as you do. And,' says I, 'he'll straighten
out their hair with his hair tonic just about as soon as you'll
straighten out their problem with your particular kind of ointment--
for which you are getting better paid than he did.'
"That riled the fellow plenty, but I went on talking to him. 'The
only difference between you and him,' says I to him, 'is that he was
whole white and was running a straight bluff, and you are part white,
and are running a half-way sort of bluff. You pray to God A'mighty so
much about this that you have just about got yourself half-persuaded
that you're honest. Do you reckon that you have got God A'mighty
persuaded that way, too?' said I to him. That made an awful
disturbance in the evangelizing and elevating outfit, and finally I
got out of patience. Says I to them, 'I don't want to forget that you
are visitors at my place. You white folks can come to my table, if
you want to, or you can eat with the oppressed and downtrodden out in
my kitchen, if you like that better. Your fellow-citizen, with the
specialty of elevating the downtrodden, can't eat at my table. After
you get it fixed up the way that suits you best, and have had your
dinner, I want you-all to go out and take one more look at the
sassafras that's growing on as fine a cotton land as ever lay out of
doors. If you can elevate my niggers so that they'll work, why go
ahead and do it. God knows they need it. Learn 'em geometry, learn
'em to write poetry, send 'em to Europe to learn painting, but please
put somewhere in your college a department showing how to dig up
stumps and chop sassafras roots. 'You'll pardon _me_,' says I, 'for
I'm a plain man; but I just want to say that that's the kind of
elevating that the black race in America needs most. But whatever you
do, don't be foolish. Don't say to me that that's done which you and
I both know _ain't_ done.'"
Both Eddring and Blount were silent for a time. "Those folks stayed
in around our country for quite a while," resumed Blount, "and they
succeeded in stirring up the niggers to thinking that they were not
getting a square deal, but ought to break into politics once more.
A few of us planters got together, and _we_ were so stirred up about
it that we thought we would do something right funny. Our county
election was coming on, and you know we have got about ten black
voters to one white down there. Under the Constitution we couldn't
elect a white man down there in a hundred years--not if we followed
the Constitution. This time, just for a joke--but listen--do you know
what we did?"
"Well, it's pretty hard to tell just what Cal Blount would do,
sometimes," said Eddring, "but I don't doubt you did something
foolish."
"No, we didn't. We just had a joke. We let them elect a nigger
sheriff for Tullahoma County! We just 'lowed we'd give 'em a touch of
law as a sort of object lesson to the Northern elevators. Thought
we'd take a shot at the educating business ourselves. The fellow's
name is Mose Taylor, and say! he's the tickledest nigger you ever did
see! He's about half-white, too, and he always did want to break into
politics one way or another. Now, he's done broke in. We let him,
just for a joke. Of course, when there's any need for a _real_
sheriff, we white people allow that we'll have to use the old one--
Jim Peters."
"Well, these things aren't always just exactly the best kind of
jokes," said Eddring. "You have been having nothing but trouble down
there for a long time."
"Trouble!" said Blount, "I should say we have. We've tried to keep it
a white man's country, but it's been a fight every day of the year.
Niggers stole and killed all the cattle of my neighbors down in
there, and we hung two or three niggers last month for stealing cows.
We put a sign on them, 'You stole a cow, cow killed you.' You've got
to make things sort of plain, you know, to these people, so's they
can understand 'em. Now, you know the trouble we had down there about
that train wreck. It's morally sure the niggers were at the bottom of
that, one way or another. That ain't all. I told you we were having a
big overflow now. Well, the fact is, we found out a day or so ago
that this overflow is mostly hand-made. They've been cutting the
levees--"
"Blount," said Eddring, quietly, "that's just why I telegraphed you
to come up here. I've got a boy here who knows about the whole
proposition. They're organizing, as sure as you're born, and they've
got a leader. They've got a Queen, they say."
"A Queen!" snorted Blount, jumping to his feet. "Queen, eh? Well,
now! you look here, if we ever do get hold of that Queen, I want to
tell you, she'll have the uneasiest head that ever did wear any kind
of crown. _Queen,_ eh!"
"And you've got a nigger sheriff now! Fine machinery for the law to
have in that part of the Delta just at this time, isn't it?"
"Sheriff! What do we need of a _sheriff,_ if we get down to the
bottom of this devilment? We have got to put it _down_, and
that's all there is to it, as you know very well. There's no two ways
about it. These disturbances, most of them due to politics, have
upset our whole country. Now, it is for us to set it right again.
We've got to cut politics out, and get down to common sense, down to
business. The South can't wait for ever on politics, Northern or
Southern. This country's _bigger_ than politics, and bigger than
politicians. You know we can count on every white man in my part of
the Delta. Can we count on you?"
Eddring hesitated, but finally looked his friend in the face. "I'm a
white man," said he. Blount went on.
"What you tell me is not altogether news. We're going after these
people, and we're going to put an end to this thing once for all.
We're going to have a _country._ Now, we want as large a number
of white gentlemen as possible. We will want you.
"Now, no matter what you are doing, or where you are, will you come
when I send for you!"
Eddring repeated simply, "I am a white man, too."
"It's for the law, Eddring--for the country."
"Yes. I think it's for the law."