CHAPTER VIII
A NEW WEAPON
From the moment the jail doors opened the Governor felt the chill ofdefeat. With his armed guard of fifty thousand "Loyal" white men he hopedto stem the rising tide of Anglo-Saxon fury. But the hope was faint. Therewas no assurance in its warmth. Every leader he had arrested withoutwarrant and held without bail was now a firebrand in a powder magazine.Mass meetings, barbecues and parades were scheduled for every day by hisenemies in every county.
The state was ablaze with wrath from the mountains to the sea. The oratorsof the white race spoke with tongues of flame.
The record of negro misrule under an African Legislature was told withbrutal detail and maddening effects. The state treasury was empty, theschool funds had been squandered, millions in bonds had been voted andstolen and the thieves had fled the state in terror.
All this the Governor knew from the first, but he also knew that anignorant negro majority would ask no questions and believe no evil of theirallies.
The adventurers from the North had done their work of alienating the raceswith a thoroughness that was nothing short of a miracle. The one man onearth who had always been his best friend, every negro now held hisbitterest foe. He would consult his old master about any subject under thesun and take his advice against the world except in politics. He would cometo the back door, beg him for a suit of clothes, take it with joyousthanks, put it on and march straight to the polls and vote against the handthat gave it.
He asked no questions as to his own ticket. It was all right if it wasagainst the white man of the South. The few Scalawags who trained withnegroes to get office didn't count.
The negro had always despised such trash. The Governor knew his solid blackconstituency would vote like sheep, exactly as they were told by their newteachers.
But the nightmare that disturbed him now, waking or dreaming, was the fearthat this full negro vote could not be polled. The daring speeches by theenraged leaders of the white race were inflaming the minds of the peoplebeyond the bounds of all reason. These leaders had sworn to carry theelection and dared the Governor to show one of his scurvy guards near apolling place on the day they should cast their ballots.
The Ku Klux Klan openly defied all authority. Their men paraded the countyroads nightly and ended their parades by lining their horsemen in cavalryformation, galloping through the towns and striking terror to every denizenof the crowded negro quarters.
In vain the Governor issued frantic appeals for the preservation of thesanctity of the ballot. His speeches in which he made this appeal wereopenly hissed.
The ballot was no longer a sacred thing. The time was in American historywhen it was the badge of citizen kingship. At this moment the best men inthe state were disfranchised and hundreds of thousands of negroes, with theinstincts of the savage and the intelligence of the child, had been giventhe ballot. Never in the history of civilization had the ballot fallen solow in any republic. The very atmosphere of a polling place was a stench inthe nostrils of decent men.
The determination of the leaders of the Klan to clear the polls by force ifneed be was openly proclaimed before the day of election. The philosophy bywhich they justified this stand was simple, and unanswerable, for it wasfounded in the eternal verities. Men are not made free by writing aconstitution on a piece of paper. Freedom is inside. A ballot is only asymbol. That symbol stands for physical force directed by the highestintelligence. The ballot, therefore, is force--physical force. Back ofevery ballot is a bayonet and the red blood of the man who holds it.Therefore, a minority submits to the verdict of a majority at the polls. Ifthere is not an intelligent, powerful fighting unit back of the scrap ofpaper that falls into a box, there's nothing there and that man's ballothas no more meaning than if it had been deposited by a trained pig or adog.
On the day of this fated election the little Scalawag Governor sat in theCapitol, the picture of nervous despair. Since sunrise his office had beenflooded with messages from every quarter of the state begging too late fortroops. Everywhere his henchmen were in a panic. From every quarter thestories were the same.
Hundreds of determined, silent white men had crowded the polls, taken theirown time to vote and refused to give an inch of room to the long line ofpanic-stricken negroes who looked on helplessly. At five o'clock in theafternoon less than a hundred blacks had voted in the entire township inwhich the Capital was located.
Norton was a candidate for the Legislature on the white ticket, and theGovernor had bent every effort to bring about his defeat. The candidateagainst him was a young negro who had been a slave of his father, and nowcalled himself Andy Norton. Andy had been a house-servant, was exactly themajor's age and they had been playmates before the war. He was endowed witha stentorian voice and a passion for oratory. He had acquired a reputationfor smartness, was good-natured, loud-mouthed, could tell a story, play thebanjo and amuse a crowd. He had been Norton's body-servant the first yearof the war.
The Governor relied on Andy to swing a resistless tide of negro votes forthe ticket and sweep the county. Under ordinary conditions, he would havedone it. But before the hurricane of fury that swept the white race on theday of the election, the voice of Andy was as one crying in the wilderness.
He had made three speeches to his crowd of helpless black voters who hadn'tbeen able to vote. The Governor sent him an urgent message to mass his menand force their way to the ballot box.
The polling place was under a great oak that grew in the Square beside theCourt House. A space had been roped off to guard the approach to the boxes.Since sunrise this space had been packed solid with a living wall of whitemen. Occasionally a well-known old negro of good character was allowed topass through and vote and then the lines closed up in solid ranks.
One by one a new white man was allowed to take his place in this wall andgradually he was moved up to the tables on which the boxes rested, voted,and slowly, like the movement of a glacier, the line crowded on in itsendless circle.
The outer part of this wall of defense which the white race had erectedaround the polling place was held throughout the day by the samemen--twenty or thirty big, stolid, dogged countrymen, who said nothing, butevery now and then winked at each other.
When Andy received the Governor's message he decided to distinguishhimself. It was late in the day, but not too late perhaps to win by asuccessful assault. He picked out twenty of his strongest buck negroes,moved them quietly to a good position near the polls, formed them into aflying wedge, and, leading the assault in person with a loud good-naturedlaugh, he hurled them against the outer line of whites.
To Andy's surprise the double line opened and yielded to his onset. He hadforced a dozen negroes into the ranks when to his surprise the white wallssuddenly closed on the blacks and held them as in a steel trap.
And then, quick as a flash, something happened. It was a month before thenegroes found out exactly what it was. They didn't see it, they couldn'thear it, but they knew it happened. They _felt_ it.
And the silent swiftness with which it happened was appalling. Every negrowho had penetrated the white wall suddenly leaped into the air with a yellof terror. The white line opened quickly and to a man the negro wedge brokeand ran for life, each black hand clasped in agony on the same spot.
Andy's voice rang full and clear above his men's:
"Goddermighty, what's dat!"
"Dey shot us, man!" screamed a negro.
The thing was simple, almost childlike in its silliness, but it wastremendously effective. The white guard in the outer line had each beenarmed with a little piece of shining steel three inches long, fixed in ahandle--a plain shoemaker's pegging awl. At a given signal they had wheeledand thrust these awls into the thick flesh of every negro's thigh.
The attack was so sudden, so unexpected, and the pain so sharp, soterrible, for the moment every negro's soul was possessed with a singleidea, how to save his particular skin and do it quickest. All _esprit decorps_ was gone. It was each for himsel
f and the devil take the hindmost!Some of them never stopped running until they cleared Buffalo creek, threemiles out of town.
Andy's ambitions were given a violent turn in a new direction. Before thepolls closed at sundown he appeared at the office of the _Eagle andPhoenix_ with a broad grin on his face and asked to see the major.
He entered the editor's room bowing and scraping, his white teeth gleaming.
Norton laughed and quietly said:
"Well, Andy?"
"Yassah, major, I des drap roun' ter kinder facilitate ye, sah, on de'lection, sah."
"It does look like the tide is turning, Andy."
"Yassah, hit sho' is turnin', but hit's gotter be a purty quick tide datkin turn afore I does, sah."
"Yes?"
"Yassah! And I drap in, major, ter 'splain ter you dat I'se gwine tergently draw outen politics, yassah. I makes up my min' ter hitch up wid dewhite folks agin. Brought up by de Nortons, sah, I'se always bin a gemman,an' I can't afford to smut my hands wid de crowd dat I been 'sociating wid.I'se glad you winnin' dis 'lection, sah, an' I'se glad you gwine ter deLegislature--anyhow de office gwine ter stay in de Norton fambly--an' I'sesatisfied, sah. I know you gwine ter treat us far an' squar----"
"If I'm elected I'll try to represent all the people, Andy," the major saidgravely.
"If you'se 'lected?" Andy laughed. "Lawd, man, you'se dar right now! I kindes see you settin' in one dem big chairs! I knowed it quick as I feel datthing pop fro my backbone des now! Yassah, I done resigned, an' I thought,major, maybe you get a job 'bout de office or 'bout de house fer er younglikely nigger 'bout my size?"
The editor smiled:
"Nothing just now, Andy, but possibly I can find a place for you in a fewdays."
"Thankee, sah. I'll hold off den till you wants me. I'll des pick up er fewodd jobs till you say de word--you won't fergit me?"
"No. I'll remember."
"An', major, ef you kin des advance me 'bout er dollar on my wages now, Ikin cheer myself up ter-night wid er good dinner. Dese here loafers donebust me. I hain't got er nickel lef!"
The major laughed heartily and "advanced" his rival for Legislative honorsa dollar.
Andy bowed to the floor:
"Any time you'se ready, major, des lemme know, sah. You'll fin' me a handyman 'bout de house, sah."
"All right, Andy, I may need you soon."
"Yassah, de sooner de better, sah," he paused in the door. "Dey gotter getup soon in de mornin', sah, ter get erhead er us Nortons--yassah, dat deyis----"
A message, the first news of the election, cut Andy's gabble short. Itspelled Victory! One after another they came from every direction--north,south, east and west--each bringing the same magic word--victory! victory!A state redeemed from negroid corruption! A great state once more in thehands of the children of the men who created it!
It had only been necessary to use force to hold the polls from hordes ofignorant negroes in the densest of the black counties. The white majoritieswould be unprecedented. The enthusiasm had reached the pitch of mania inthese counties. They would all break records.
A few daring men in the black centres of population, where negro rule wasat its worst, had guarded the polls under his direction armed with thesimple device of a shoemaker's awl, and in every case where it had beenused the resulting terror had cleared the place of every negro. In not asingle case where this novel weapon had been suddenly and mysteriouslythrust into a black skin was there an attempt to return to the polls. Along-suffering people, driven at last to desperation, had met force withforce and wrested a commonwealth from the clutches of the vandals who werelooting and disgracing it.
Now he would call the little Scalawag to the bar of justice.