LEECH AS A STATESMAN AND DR. CARY AS A COLLECTOR OF BILLS
When Leech arrived at the capital in the capacity of statesman he
found the field even better than he had anticipated. It was a strange
assembly that was gathered together to reconstruct and make laws for
a great State after years of revolution. The large majority were
negroes who, a few years before, had been barbers, porters in hotels,
cart-drivers, or body-servants, with a few new-comers to the State,
like Leech himself: nomadic adventurers, who, on account of the
smallness of their personal belongings, were termed “carpet-baggers.”
Besides these, a few whites who, in hope of gain, had allied themselves
with the new-comers; and a small sprinkling of the old residents, who
had either been Union men or had had their disabilities removed, and
represented constituencies where there were few negroes. They were as
distinguishable as statues in the midst of a mob. But the multitude of
negroes who crowded the Assembly halls gave the majority an appearance
of being overwhelming. They filled the porticos and vestibules, and
thronged the corridors and galleries in a dense mass, revelling in
their newly acquired privileges. The air was heavy with the smoke of
bad cigars, which, however, was not wholly without use, as the scent of
the tobacco served at least one good purpose; the floors were slippery
with tobacco-juice. The crowd was loud, pompous, and good-natured.
Leech looked with curiosity on the curious spectacle. He had had no
idea what a useful band of coadjutors he would have. He took a survey
of the field and made his calculations quickly and with shrewdness. He
would be a leader.
“Looks like a corn-shuckin’,” said Still, who had accompanied his
friend to the capital to see him take his seat. “A good head-man could
get a heap of corn shucked.”
“Does look a little like a checker-board,” assented Leech, “and I mean
to be one of the kings. It’s keep ahead or get run over in this crowd,
and I’m smart as any of ’em. There’s a good cow to milk, and the one
as milks her first will get the cream.” His metaphors were becoming
bucolic, as befitted a man who was beginning to set up as a planter.
“The cream’s in the drippin’s,” corrected Still.
“Not of this cow,” said Leech.
Leech soon came to be regarded as quite a financier. He talked
learnedly of bonds and debentures, of per cents, and guarantees, and
dividends, of which more than half the body did not even know the
meaning. Once, when he was speaking of the thousands of “bonds” he
would put on a railway to the mile, one of his confrères asked what he
would put in so many barns.
“Ain’t you heah him say he’s gwine have a million o’ stock?” asked
another colored statesman, contemptuously. The answer was satisfactory.
The amount of spoil which in time was found to be divided was something
of which not even Leech himself, at first, had any idea. The railways,
the public printing, insurance, and all internal improvements, were
fertile fields for the exercise of his genius. He was shortly an
undisputed power. He followed his simple rule: he led. “When someone
offered a resolution to put down new matting in the Assembly hall,
Leech amended to substitute Brussels carpet. To prove his liberality
he added mahogany furniture, and handsome pier-glasses. The bills went
up into the scores of thousands; but that was nothing. As Leech said,
_they_ did not pay them. If rumors were true, not only did Leech not
pay the bills, he partly received their proceeds. His aspirations
were growing every day. He had no trouble in carrying his measures
through. He turned his committee-room—or one of his rooms, for he had
several—into a saloon, where he kept whiskey, champagne, and cigars
always free for those who were on his side. “Leech’s bar” became a
State institution. It was open night and day for the whole eight years
of his service. He said he found it cheaper than direct payment, and
then he lumped all the costs in one item and had them paid by one
appropriation bill, as “sundries.” Why should he pay, he asked, for
expenditures which were for the public benefit? And, indeed, why? As
for himself, he boasted with great pride when the matter came up at a
later time, that he never touched a drop.
He had “found the very field for his genius.” He boasted to Still: “I
always knew I had sense. Old Krafton thinks he’s running the party. But
I’m a doin’ it. Some day he’ll wake up and find I’m not only a doin’
that, but a runnin’ the State too. I mean to be governor.” His blue
eyes twinkled pleasantly.
“Don’t wake him up too soon,” counselled Still.
One of the statesman’s acts was to obtain a charter for a railway to
run from the capital up through his county to the mountains. Among the
incorporators were himself, Hiram Still, Still’s son, and Mr. Bolter.
“How will you build this road?” asked Mr. Haskelton, an old gentleman
who had been a Union man always—one of the few old residents of the
State in the body.
“Oh! we’ll manage that,” declared Leech, lightly. “We are going to
teach you old moss-backs a few things.” And they did. He had an act
passed making the State guarantee the bonds. The old resident raised a
question as to the danger to the credit of the State if it should go
into the business of endorsing private enterprises.
“The credit of the State!” Leech exclaimed. “What is the credit of the
State to us? As long as the bonds sell she has credit, hasn’t she?”
This argument was unanswerable.
“But how will you pay these bonds?” urged Mr. Haskelton.
“I will tell you how we will pay them; we will pay them by taxes,”
replied Leech.
“Ay-yi! Dat’s it!” shouted the dusky throng about him.
“Someone has to pay those taxes.”
“Yes, but who?” Leech turned to his associates who were hanging on his
words. “Do you pay them?”
“Nor, dat we don’t,” shouted Nicholas Ash.
“No, the white people pay them—and we mean to make them pay them,”
declared Leech.
This declaration was received with an outburst of applause, not
unmingled with laughter, for his audience had some appreciation of
humor.
“Lands will only stand so much tax,” insisted his interlocutor; “if you
raise taxes beyond this point you will defeat your own purpose, for the
lands will be forfeited. We cannot pay them. We are already flat of our
backs.”
“That’s where we want you,” retorted Leech, and there was a roar of
approval.
The old gentleman remained calm.
“Then what will you do?” he persisted.
“Then we will take them ourselves,” asserted Leech, boldly. He looked
around on the dusky throng behind him, and up at the gallery, black
with faces. “We will make the State give them as homes to the people
who are really entitled to them. They know how to work them.” A
great shout of applause went up from floor and gallery. Only the old
gentleman, gray and pallid, with burning eyes stood unmoved amid the
tumult.
“You cannot do this. It will be robbery.”
The crowd, somewhat disturbed by his earnestness, looked at Leech to
hear how he would meet this fact. He was equal to the emergency.
“Robbery, is it?” he shouted, waving his arms, and advancing down the
aisle. “Then it is only paying robbery for robbery. You have been the
robbers! You robbed the Indians of these lands, to start with. You went
to Africa and stole these free colored people from their happy homes
and made them slaves. You robbed them of their freedom, and you have
robbed them ever since of their wages. Now you say we cannot pay them a
little of what you owe them? We will do it, and do it by law. We have
the majority and by —! we will make the laws. If you white gentlemen
cannot pay the taxes on your homes, we’ll put some colored ones there
to get the benefit.” He shook his hand violently in the vehemence of
his speech. And again the crowd roared.
“Don’t shake your finger in my face,” said the old man so quietly that
only Leech heard it. He backed off.
He became an undisputed leader. “By —! I had no idea I was such an
orator,” he said to Still, smiling.
“I haven’t made such a speech as that since just before the war. I made
that old coon admit he was flat on his back.”
“A coon fights better on his back ’n’ any other way,” warned Still.
“I’ll put some hunters on this coon that will keep him quiet enough,”
said Leech. “I’ll arm a hundred thousand niggers.”
Leech made good his promises. The expenditures went up beyond belief.
But to meet the expenses taxes were laid until they rose to double,
quadruple, and, in some parts of the State, ten times what they had
been. Meantime he had been in communication with Mr. Bolter, who had
come down and paid him and Still a flying visit, and a part of the
bonds of his railroad were “placed.”
The taxes, as was predicted, went far beyond the ability of the
landowners to pay them, and vast numbers of plantations throughout
the State were forfeited. To meet this exigency, Leech was as good
as his word. A measure was introduced and a Land Commission was
appointed to take charge of such forfeited lands and sell them to
his followers on long terms, of fifteen to twenty years. Leech was
a member of the general Commission and Still was appointed agent
of the Board in his section of the State. Still was a very active
commissioner—“efficient,” the Commission called him.
Several places were sold which shortly were resold to Leech and Still.
Leech added to a place he bought on the edge of Brutusville, adjoining
General Legaie’s, the plantations of two old gentlemen near him.
Sherwood had bought one and Moses the other. Leech gave them “a fair
advance.” He said it was “all square.” He was now waiting for General
Legaie’s place.
Leech built himself a large house, and furnished it with furniture
richer than that in any other house in the county. It was rumored that
he was preparing his house for Virgy Still.
Nicholas Ash bought a plantation and a buggy and began to drive fast
horses. Many of their fellow-lawmakers bloomed out in the same way.
They were the only ones who now rode in carriages. Their proceedings
did not affect themselves only. They reached Dr. Cary and General
Legaie and the old proprietors on their plantations, quite as directly,
though in the opposite way. The spoils that Leech, Still, Governor
Krafton and their followers received, someone else paid. And just
when they were needed most, the negroes abandoned the fields. No one
could expect statesmen to work. Cattle, jewels, and plate were sold
as long as they lasted, to meet the piled-up taxes; but in time there
was nothing left to sell, and the plantations began to go. In the Red
Rock neighborhood, rumors were abroad as to the destiny of the various
places. A deeper gravity settled on Dr. Cary’s serious face, and
General Legaie’s lively countenance was taking on an expression not far
from grim. It was less the financial ruin that was overwhelming them
than the dishonor to the State. It was a stab in their bosoms.
Mr. Ledger was making inquiries as to the possibility of their reducing
shortly their indebtedness to him, and the Doctor was forced to write
him a frank statement of affairs. He had never worked so hard in his
life, he wrote; he had never had so much practice; but he could collect
nothing, and it was all he could do to meet his taxes.
“Why don’t you collect your bills?” naturally inquired Mr. Ledger.
“Collect my bills?” replied the Doctor. “How can I press my neighbors
who are as poor, and poorer, than I am?”
However, inspired by Mr. Ledger’s application, the Doctor did try to
collect some of the money due him. He did not send out his bills.
He had never done that in his life. Instead, he rode around on a
collecting-tour. He was successful in getting some money; for he
applied first to such of his debtors as were thriftiest. Andy Stamper,
who had just returned from town where he had been selling sumac,
chickens, and other produce, paid him with thanks the whole of his
bill, and only expressed surprise that it was so small. “Why I thought,
Doctor, ’twould be three or four times that?” said Andy. “I’ve kept a
sort of account of the times you’ve been to my house, and seems to me’t
ought to be?”
“No, sir, that’s all I have against you,” said the Doctor, placidly;
replying earnestly to Andy’s voluble thanks. “I am very much obliged to
you.” He did not tell Andy that he had divided his accounts by three
and had had hard work to bring himself to apply for anything.
This and one or two other instances in the beginning of his tour
quite relieved the Doctor; for they showed that, at least, some of
his neighbors had some money. So he rode on. He soon found, however,
that he had gleaned the richest places first. On his way home he
applied to others of his patients with far different results. Not only
was the account he received very sorrowful; but the tale of poverty
that several of them told was so moving that the Doctor, instead of
receiving anything from them, distributed amongst them what he had
already collected, saying they were poorer than himself. So when he
reached home that evening he had no more than when he rode away.
“Well, Bess,” he said, “it is the first time I ever dunned a debtor,
and it is the last.” Mrs. Cary looked at him with the expression in her
eyes with which a mother looks at a child.
“I think it is just as well,” she said, smiling.
“You must go and see old Mrs. Bellows,” he said. “She is in great
trouble for fear they’ll sell her place.”
Blair Cary, like her mother, watched with constant anxiety the change
in her father. His hair was becoming white, and his face was growing
more worn.
At length, a plan which she had been forming for some time took
definite shape. She announced her intention of applying for one of the
common schools which had been opened in the neighborhood. When she
first proposed the plan, it was received as if she were crazy—but her
father and mother soon found that they no longer had a child to deal
with, but a woman of sense and force of character. The reasons she
gave were so clear and unanswerable that at length she overcame all
objections and obtained the consent of all the members of the family
except Mammy Krenda. The only point on which her father stood out for
was that she should not apply for one of the schools under the new
county-managers. A compromise was effected and she became the teacher
of the school that had been built by the old residents. The Mammy still
stood out. The idea of “her child” teaching a common school outraged
the old woman’s sense of propriety, and threw her into a state of
violent agitation. She finally yielded, but only on condition that she
might accompany her mistress to the school every day.
This she did, and when Miss Blair secured the little school at the fork
in the road not far from their big gate, the old mammy was to be seen
every day, sitting in a corner grim and a little supercilious, knitting
busily, while her eyes ever and anon wandered over the classes before
her, transfixing the individual who was receiving her mistress’s
attention, with so sharp a glance that the luckless wight was often
disconcerted thereby.
As old Mr. Haskelton had said, the old residents were flat on their
backs. Leech was of this opinion when he passed his measures. But
remembering Still’s warning, to make sure, as the troops had been
withdrawn from the county, he put through a bill to organize a State
militia, under which large numbers of the negroes in the old county and
throughout the State were formed in companies.
He had other plans hatching which he thought they would subserve.