A WHISPER IN THE CROWD
The excitement which preceded the first Reconstruction election in the
South paralyzed the industries of the country. When demagogues poured down
from the North and began their raving before crowds of ignorant negroes,
the plow stopped in the furrow, the hoe was dropped, and the millennium
was at hand.
Negro tenants, working under contracts issued by the Freedman's Bureau,
stopped work, and rode their landlords' mules and horses around the
county, following these orators.
The loss to the cotton crop alone from the abandonment of the growing
plant was estimated at over $60,000,000.
The one thing that saved the situation from despair was the large grain
and forage crops of the previous season which thrifty farmers had stored
in their barns. So important was the barn and its precious contents that
Dr. Cameron hired Jake to sleep in his.
This immense barn, which was situated at the foot of the hill some two
hundred yards behind the house, had become a favourite haunt of Marion and
Hugh. She had made a pet of the beautiful thoroughbred mare which had
belonged to Ben during the war. Marion went every day to give her an apple
or lump of sugar, or carry her a bunch of clover. The mare would follow
her about like a cat.
Another attraction at the barn for them was Becky Sharpe, Ben's setter.
She came to Marion one morning, wagging her tail, seized her dress and led
her into an empty stall, where beneath the trough lay sleeping snugly ten
little white-and-black spotted puppies.
The girl had never seen such a sight before and went into ecstasies. Becky
wagged her tail with pride at her compliments. Every morning she would
pull her gently into the stall just to hear her talk and laugh and pet her
babies.
Whatever election day meant to the men, to Marion it was one of unalloyed
happiness: she was to ride horseback alone and dance at her first ball.
Ben had taught her to ride, and told her she could take Queen to Lover's
Leap and back alone. Trembling with joy, her beautiful face wreathed in
smiles, she led the mare to the pond in the edge of the lot and watched
her drink its pure spring water.
When he helped her to mount in front of the hotel under her mother's gaze,
and saw her ride out of the gate, with the exquisite lines of her little
figure melting into the graceful lines of the mare's glistening form, he
exclaimed:
"I declare, I don't know which is the prettier, Marion or Queen!"
"I know," was the mother's soft answer.
"They are both thoroughbreds," said Ben, watching them admiringly.
"Wait till you see her to-night in her first ball dress," whispered Mrs.
Lenoir.
At noon Ben and Phil strolled to the polling-place to watch the progress
of the first election under negro rule. The Square was jammed with
shouting, jostling, perspiring negroes, men, women, and children. The day
was warm, and the African odour was supreme even in the open air.
A crowd of two hundred were packed around a peddler's box. There were two
of them--one crying the wares, and the other wrapping and delivering the
goods. They were selling a new patent poison for rats.
"I've only a few more bottles left now, gentlemen," he shouted, "and the
polls will close at sundown. A great day for our brother in black. Two
years of army rations from the Freedman's Bureau, with old army clothes
thrown in, and now the ballot--the priceless glory of American
citizenship. But better still the very land is to be taken from these
proud aristocrats and given to the poor down-trodden black man. Forty
acres and a mule--think of it! Provided, mind you--that you have a bottle
of my wonder-worker to kill the rats and save your corn for the mule. No
man can have the mule unless he has corn; and no man can have corn if he
has rats--and only a few bottles left----"
"Gimme one," yelled a negro.
"Forty acres and a mule, your old masters to work your land and pay his
rent in corn, while you sit back in the shade and see him sweat."
"Gimme er bottle and two er dem pictures!" bawled another candidate for a
mule.
The peddler handed him the bottle and the pictures and threw a handful of
his labels among the crowd. These labels happened to be just the size of
the ballots, having on them the picture of a dead rat lying on his back,
and above, the emblem of death, the crossbones and skull.
"Forty acres and a mule for every black man--why was I ever born white? I
never had no luck, nohow!"
Phil and Ben passed on nearer the polling-place, around which stood a
cordon of soldiers with a line of negro voters two hundred yards in length
extending back into the crowd.
The negro Leagues came in armed battalions and voted in droves, carrying
their muskets in their hands. Less than a dozen white men were to be seen
about the place.
The negroes, under the drill of the League and the Freedman's Bureau,
protected by the bayonet, were voting to enfranchise themselves,
disfranchise their former masters, ratify a new constitution, and elect a
legislature to do their will. Old Aleck was a candidate for the House,
chief poll-holder, and seemed to be in charge of the movements of the
voters outside the booth as well as inside. He appeared to be omnipresent,
and his self-importance was a sight Phil had never dreamed. He could not
keep his eyes off him.
"By George, Cameron, he's a wonder!" he laughed.
Aleck had suppressed as far as possible the story of the painted stakes
and the deed, after sending out warnings to the brethren to beware of two
enticing strangers. The surveyors had reaped a rich harvest and passed on.
Aleck made up his mind to go to Columbia, make the laws himself, and never
again trust a white man from the North or South. The agent of the
Freedman's Bureau at Piedmont tried to choke him off the ticket. The
League backed him to a man. He could neither read nor write, but before he
took to whiskey he had made a specialty of revival exhortation, and his
mouth was the most effective thing about him. In this campaign he was an
orator of no mean powers. He knew what he wanted, and he knew what his
people wanted, and he put the thing in words so plain that a wayfaring
man, though a fool, couldn't make any mistake about it.
As he bustled past, forming a battalion of his brethren in line to march
to the polls, Phil followed his every movement with amused interest.
Besides being so bow-legged that his walk was a moving joke he was so
striking a negro in his personal appearance, he seemed to the young
Northerner almost a distinct type of man.
His head was small and seemed mashed on the sides until it bulged into a
double lobe behind. Even his ears, which he had pierced and hung with red
earbobs, seemed to have been crushed flat to the side of his head. His
kinked hair was wrapped in little hard rolls close to the skull and bound
tightly with dirty thread. His receding forehead was high and indicated a
cunning intelligence. His nose was broad and crushed flat against his
face. His jaws were strong and angular, mouth wide, and lips thick,
curling back from rows of solid teeth set obliquely in their blue gums.
The one perfect thing about him was the size and setting of his mouth--he
was a born African orator, undoubtedly descended from a long line of
savage spell-binders, whose eloquence in the palaver houses of the jungle
had made them native leaders. His thin spindle-shanks supported an oblong,
protruding stomach, resembling an elderly monkey's, which seemed so heavy
it swayed his back to carry it.
The animal vivacity of his small eyes and the flexibility of his eyebrows,
which he worked up and down rapidly with every change of countenance,
expressed his eager desires.
He had laid aside his new shoes, which hurt him, and went barefooted to
facilitate his movements on the great occasion. His heels projected and
his foot was so flat that what should have been the hollow of it made a
hole in the dirt where he left his track.
He was already mellow with liquor, and was dressed in an old army uniform
and cap, with two horse pistols buckled around his waist. On a strap
hanging from his shoulder were strung a half-dozen tin canteens filled
with whiskey.
A disturbance in the line of voters caused the young men to move forward
to see what it meant.
Two negro troopers had pulled Jake out of the line, and were dragging him
toward old Aleck.
The election judge straightened himself up with great dignity:
"What wuz de rapscallion doin'?"
"In de line, tryin' ter vote."
"Fetch 'im befo' de judgment bar," said Aleck, taking a drink from one of
his canteens.
The troopers brought Jake before the judge.
"Tryin' ter vote, is yer?"
"'Lowed I would."
"You hear 'bout de great sassieties de Gubment's fomentin' in dis
country?"
"Yas, I hear erbout 'em."
"Is yer er member er de Union League?"
"Na-sah. I'd rudder steal by myself. I doan' lak too many in de party!"
"En yer ain't er No'f Ca'liny gemmen, is yer--yer ain't er member er de
'Red Strings?'"
"Na-sah, I come when I'se called--dey doan' hatter put er string on
me--ner er block, ner er collar, ner er chain, ner er muzzle----"
"Will yer 'splain ter dis cote----" railed Aleck.
"What cote? Dat ole army cote?" Jake laughed in loud peals that rang over
the square.
Aleck recovered his dignity and demanded angrily:
"Does yer belong ter de Heroes ob Americky?"
"Na-sah. I ain't burnt nobody's house ner barn yet, ner hamstrung no
stock, ner waylaid nobody atter night--honey, I ain't fit ter jine. Heroes
ob Americky! Is you er hero?"
"Ef yer doan' b'long ter no s'iety," said Aleck with judicial
deliberation, "what is you?"
"Des er ole-fashun all-wool-en-er-yard-wide nigger dat stan's by his ole
marster 'cause he's his bes' frien', stays at home, en tends ter his own
business."
"En yer pay no 'tenshun ter de orders I sent yer ter jine de League?"
"Na-sah. I ain't er takin' orders f'um er skeer-crow."
Aleck ignored his insolence, secure in his power.
"You doan b'long ter no s'iety, what yer git in dat line ter vote for?"
"Ain't I er nigger?"
"But yer ain't de right kin' er nigger. 'Res' dat man fer 'sturbin' de
peace."
They put Jake in jail, persuaded his wife to leave him, and expelled him
from the Baptist church, all within the week.
As the troopers led Jake to prison, a young negro apparently about fifteen
years old approached Aleck, holding in his hand one of the peddler's rat
labels, which had gotten well distributed among the crowd. A group of
negro boys followed him with these rat labels in their hands, studying
them intently.
"Look at dis ticket, Uncle Aleck," said the leader.
"Mr. Alexander Lenoir, sah--is I yo' uncle, nigger?"
The youth walled his eyes angrily.
"Den doan' you call me er nigger!"
"Who' yer talkin to, sah? You kin fling yer sass at white folks, but,
honey, yuse er projeckin' wid death now!"
"I ain't er nigger--I'se er gemman, I is," was the sullen answer.
"How ole is you?" asked Aleck in milder tones.
"Me mudder say sixteen--but de Buro man say I'se twenty-one yistiddy, de
day 'fo' 'lection."
"Is you voted to-day?"
"Yessah; vote in all de boxes 'cept'n dis one. Look at dat ticket. Is dat
de straight ticket?"
Aleck, who couldn't read the twelve-inch letters of his favourite bar-room
sign, took the rat label and examined it critically.
"What ail it?" he asked at length.
The boy pointed at the picture of the rat.
"What dat rat doin', lyin' dar on his back, wid his heels cocked up in de
air--'pear ter me lak a rat otter be standin' on his feet!"
Aleck reexamined it carefully, and then smiled benignly on the youth.
"De ignance er dese folks. What ud yer do widout er man lak me enjued wid
de sperit en de power ter splain tings?"
"You sho' got de sperits," said the boy impudently, touching a canteen.
Aleck ignored the remark and looked at the rat label smilingly.
"Ain't we er votin', ter-day, on de Constertooshun what's ter take de
ballot away f'um de white folks en gib all de power ter de cullud
gemmen--I axes yer dat?"
The boy stuck his thumbs under his arms and walled his eyes.
"Yessah!"
"Den dat means de ratification ob de Constertooshun!"
Phil laughed, followed, and watched them fold their tickets, get in line,
and vote the rat labels.
Ben turned toward a white man with gray beard, who stood watching the
crowd.
He was a pious member of the Presbyterian church but his face didn't have
a pious expression to-day. He had been refused the right to vote because
he had aided the Confederacy by nursing one of his wounded boys.
He touched his hat politely to Ben.
"What do you think of it, Colonel Cameron?" he asked with a touch of
scorn.
"What's your opinion, Mr. McAllister?"
"Well, Colonel, I've been a member of the church for over forty years. I'm
not a cussin' man--but there's a sight I never expected to live to see.
I've been a faithful citizen of this State for fifty years. I can't vote,
and a nigger is to be elected to-day to represent me in the Legislature.
Neither you, Colonel, nor your father are good enough to vote. Every
nigger in this county sixteen years old and up voted to-day--I ain't a
cussing man, and I don't say it as a cuss word, but all I've got to say
is, IF there BE such a thing as a d--d shame--that's it!"
"Mr. McAllister, the recording angel wouldn't have made a mark had you
said it without the 'IF.'"
"God knows what this country's coming to--I don't," said the old man
bitterly. "I'm afraid to let my wife and daughter go out of the house, or
stay in it, without somebody with them."
Ben leaned closer and whispered, as Phil approached:
"Come to my office to-night at ten o'clock; I want to see you on some
important business."
The old man seized his hand eagerly.
"Shall I bring the boys?"
Ben smiled.
"No. I've seen them some time ago."