"If you have any clew to the persons guilty of this act, or if I can be of any service in freeing you from annoyances, please to consider me, both personally and officially,
"Yours to command,
"THOMAS DENTON."
The other two were directed to Metta. The first was from the wife of a Northern man who had settled in a neighboring State, and when Metta had met at the house of a common friend some months before. It was edged with black, and told a sad story: —
"MY DEAR MRS. SERVOSSE, — I have desired to write you for several days, but have been too overwhelmed with grief to do so. You have probably seen in the papers the account of my husband's death. You know he was appointed sheriff of this county a few months ago by the general commanding the district. There was a great deal of feeling about the matter, and I begged him not to accept. Somehow I had a presentiment of evil to come from it; but he laughed at my fears, said he should only do his duty, and there could be no cause of increased hostility against him. Indeed, I think he had an idea, that, when the people found out that his only purpose was to administer the office fairly, they would respect his motives, and be more friendly than they had been for the past few months. He never would believe that the hostility towards Northern men was anything more than a temporary fever.
"After he entered upon the office, there were many threats made against him, and I begged him not to expose himself. But he did not know what fear was, and rode all over the county at all times, in the performance of his duties, coming home every night when it was possible, however, because he knew of my anxiety. One week ago to-day he was detained at the court-house later than usual. You know we live about five miles from the county-seat. As night came on I grew very anxious about him. I seemed to know that danger threatened him. Finally I became so uneasy that I had my mare saddled, and rode to meet him, as I frequently did. The road is almost directly westward, winding through an overhanging forest, with only here and there a plantation road leading off to a neighbor's house.
"It was almost sundown when I started. Would to God it had been earlier! Perhaps I might have saved him then. I had gone about a mile, when, rising a little eminence, I saw him coming down the slope beyond, and at little branch at the foot of the hill I stopped to wait for him. He waved his hat as he saw me, and struck into a brisk canter. I wanted to give the mare the whip, and gallop to him; but I feared he would see my alarm, and count it childish: so I sat and waited. He had come half the distance, when suddenly there was a puff of smoke from the roadside. I did not wait even to hear the report, but with a cry of despair struck my horse, and rushed forward like the wind. I saw him fall from his horse, which rushed madly by me. Then I saw three miscreants steal away from a leafy blind, behind which they had been hidden; and then I had my poor murdered husband in my arms, heard his last struggling gasp, and felt his warm heart-blood gushing over my hands as I clasped him to my breast. I knew nothing more until I was at home with my dead.
"Oh, my dear friend, I can not picture to you my desolation! It is so horrible! If he had died in battle, I could have endured it; even accident, or swift disease, it seems to me, I could have borne: but this horrible, causeless murder fills me with rage and hate as well as grief. Why did we ever come to this accursed land! And oh, my friend, do not neglect my warning! Do not cease your entreaty until your husband hears your prayers. Do no risk the fate which has befallen me.
"Yours in hopeless sorrow,
"ALICE E. COLEMAN."
The other letter was in a neat, feminine hand, written on the coarse, dingy paper known as "Confederate paper," which was the only kind accessible during the blockade. It was evidently written by a woman of culture. It was not signed with any name, but only "Your true friend," and bore the postmark of Verdenton: —
"MY DEAR MRS. SERVOSSE, — Though you do not know who I am, I have seen you, and am sure you are not only a lady, but a sensible, true-hearted woman. Though a stranger, I would not have you suffer grief, or incur trouble, if in my power to prevent it. Please, then, dear madam, listen to the advice of a sincere well-wisher, and do all in your power to persuade your husband to leave this part of the country. I am sure he can not be a bad man, or you would not love him so well. But you must know that his ideas are very obnoxious to us Southern people; and if he stays here, and continues to express them as he has hitherto, I feel that there will be trouble. You know our Southern gentlemen can not endure any reflections upon their conduct or motives; and the hopes and aspirations which gathered around the Confederacy are all the dearer from the fate of our 'Lost Cause.' I know whereof I write." [The next sentence had been commenced with the words "My husband," which had been so nearly erased that they could only be read with difficulty.] "Several gentlemen were speaking of the matter in my hearing only last night, and I tremble to think what may occur if you do not heed my warning.
"O dear lady! let me beg you, as a Christian woman, to implore your husband to go away. You do not know what sorrow you will save, not only yourself, but others who would mourn almost as deeply as you, and perhaps more bitterly. The war is over; and oh! if you have mourned as much as I over its havoc, you will be willing to do and suffer any thing in order to avoid further bloodshed, violence, evil, and sorrow. May God guide you!
"I can only sign myself
"YOUR TRUE FRIEND."
Metta took these letters to the Fool, and laid them silently before him. Her face looked gray and wan, and there was the shadow of a great fear in her eyes, as she did so. He read them over carefully, laid them down, and looked up into her face as he said, —
"Well?"
"I thought I ought to show them to you, dear husband," she said with quivering lip; and then the pent-up tears overflowed the swollen lids, as she buried her head on his breast, and, clasped in his arms, wept long and convulsively. When her grief was somewhat soothed, he said, —
"What do you wish me to do, Metta?"
"Whatever you think to be your duty, my dear husband," she replied, the sunshine of wifely devotion showing through the last drops of the shower.
He kissed her forehead and lips, — kissed away the briny tears from her eyes.
"We will stay," said the Fool.
The subject of removal from their adopted home was never again mooted between them.
CHAPTER XIX
CITIZENS IN EMBRYO
Table of Contents
"WHAT you tink ob de League, Kunnel?" said a sturdy, intelligent colored man, who, under direction of Comfort Servosse, was pruning the grape-vines that were scattered about in all manner of unexpected places, as well as in the staid and orderly rows of the vineyard at Warrington. It was a bright day in winter; and the stricken soldier was gathering strength and vitality by the unconscious medicament of the soft sunshine and balmy breezes, and that light labor which the care of trees and vines encouraged. He stood now critically surveying a long-neglected "Diana," on which he was about to commence operations, his pruning-knife in his hand, and his shears sticking out from a side-pocket of his overalls. At the next vine was working his interlocutor, who glanced slyly towards him as he asked the question.
"The 'League,' Andy?" said Servosse, looking at his co-laborer with an amused smile, while he tried the edge of his knife with his thumb. "What league do you mean?"
"De Union League, ob co'se. Didn't know dar was any udder. Is dah?" said Andy, as he finished tying up the vine at which he had been at work, and started to the next.
"Oh, yes! there are various kinds of leagues. But why do you inquire about the Union League? How did you ever hear of it?"
"Wal, putty much de same way you did, I 'spects," answered Andy with a grin.
"Pretty much as I did?" said Servosse. "What do you mean?"
"Why, I 'llow you b'longs to it," said Andy. "Dey tells me every Union soldier b'longs to it. 'Sides dat, I made de knocks de udder day on de work-bench, when you was workin' at de wisteria in front o' de winder, an' I seed you look up kinder sudden-like, an' den smile t
o youself as if you thought you'd heerd from an ole friend, an' woke up to find ye'd been a-dreamin'."
"So I did, Andy," answered the Caucasian. "Some time during the war I heard of an organization known as the Union League. It strikes me that I first heard of it in the mountains of East Tennessee, as instituted for self-protection and mutual support among the sturdy Unioners there in those trying times. However that may be, I first came in contact with its workings in the fall of 1864. It was the very darkest period of the war for us. The struggle had lasted so long that everybody was tired out. The party in the North who were opposed to the war" —
"Wasn't they called 'Copperheads'?" interrupted Andy.
"Yes, we called them 'Copperheads,'" answered the Fool. "These men seemed to think that it would be a good time to stop the war, on the idea that both sides were tired of it, and would rather end it on any terms than keep it up on uncertainties. So they were making great efforts to elect a president who would let up on the Rebellion, and enable the rebels of the South to accomplish their secession. At this while I escaped from a Confederate prison, and after a time arrived in Philadelphia. While I waited there for orders, a friend asked me one night if I didn't want to join the Union League. Upon asking what it was, I found that it was a society of men who were determined never to give up the Union under any hazard, but to uphold and sustain it with property and life if need be. It was a secret association; and its chief purpose was said to be to enable the loyal people of any city or neighborhood to muster at the shortest possible notice, to resist invasion, put down riot, or enforce the law, — to protect themselves and families, or aid the government in extremities."
"Was it any good?"asked Andy.
"Well, indeed," responded his employer musingly, "I do not know. A soldier who was on duty at the front the greater part of the war had very little opportunity for knowing what went on in his rear. I have heard that when 'Lee marched over the mountain-wall' into Maryland and Pennsylvania, and threatened Philadelphia and Baltimore, the bells of Philadelphia struck the signals of the League, and thousands rallied at their places of assembly in an instant; and that regiment after regiment of resolute minute-men were organized and equipped almost without an hour's delay. I know nothing about it."
"Do you want dis 'Concord' cut back to two eyes, like de rest, Kunnel? It's made a powerful strong growth, an' it seems a clar waste to cut it back so close," asked the hireling, as he held up for his employer's inspection a rank-grown cane of the previous year, which had run along the ground until it had appropriated the stake of a weakling neighbor, and clambered over it, smothering in its sturdy coils the growth of the rightful owner.
"Yes," said Servosse hesitatingly, "cut it down. It seems a pity, as you say, to destroy that beautiful growth; but, when vines have run wild for a time, the only way to bring them back to sober, profitable bearing, is to cut them back without scruple. Cut them down to two eyes, if they are as big as your wrist, Andy. It's wasting the past, but saving the future. And it's my notion that the same thing is true of peoples and nations, Andy. For instance, when a part of a country rebels, and runs wild for a time, it ought to have the rank wood, the wild growth, cut away without mercy. They ought to be held down, and pruned and shaped, until they are content to bear 'the peaceable fruits of righteousness,' instead of clambering about, 'cumbering the ground' with a useless growth."
"You was sayin' what de League had done, a while ago," said Andy, after there had been a period of silence, while they each cut away at their respective vines.
"Yes," said Servosse. "I have heard, too, that the order was very useful as a sort of reserve force in the rear, in putting down such terrible riots as were gotten up in New York in the dark days of the war, by emissaries of the enemy, acting with the Copperheads of the North."
"Was dar many of 'em — de Leaguers I mean?" asked Andy.
"I understand," was the reply, "that it spread pretty much all through the North in the later years of the war, and embraced a very large portion of the Union men in those states."
"Did all de Yankee soldiers belong to it?" queried the listener.
"Really, I don't know," said Servosse. "I don't suppose I have ever heard more than a dozen or two say any thing about it in the army. I suppose most of the veterans who went home on leave of absence in 1864 may have joined it while at home, and the new levies may have belonged to it. Of course, we had no need for such an organization in the army."
"Well, is der any harm in it, Kunnel? Any reason why anybody shouldn't jine it?" asked Andy earnestly.
"None in the world, that I can see," answered Servosse. "Indeed, I do not see why it should not be a good thing for the colored people to do. It would teach them to organize and work together, and they would learn in it something about those public duties which are sure very soon to be cast upon them. Besides, it is by no means sure that they may not need it as a means of self protection. I had not thought of it before; but I believe it might be a good thing."
"Dat's my notion, Mars' Kunnel. We's got a little league down h'yer to Verdenton at de schoolhouse fer de culled folks, an' we'd be mighty proud tu hev ye come down some Chuseday night. Dat we would," said Andy.
"What! you have got a chapter of the Union League there?"
"Yes. it's jes' like what you's been a-tellin' 'bout."
"How did you get it?"
"Wal, I don't jes' 'zactly know. Dar's some culled men belongs to it as was soldiers in de Union army, an' I 'llowed dey might hev fotch it wid 'em when dey come h'yer Dat's what made me ax you so close 'bout dat."
"Who belong to it? Are they all colored members?"
"Wal, de heft ob 'em is culled, ob co'se; but der's a right smart sprinklin' ob white folks, arter all. Dar's all de Ufford boys: dey wuz Unioners, an' was hidin' out all de wah; an' dey say dey hed somefin' monstrous nigh like it in de bushes, an' 'long de lines, — what dey call de 'Red Stringems,' er somethin' like dat. Den dar's Mr. Murry: he was jes' de rantankerousest Union man dat ever was, all tru de wah. I'se heerd him cuss de Kinfederacy right out when de soldiers was marchin' long de street fo' his do'. He'll du tu tie tu, he will. He says it does him good tu hear us sing 'Rally roun' de Flag,' an' de 'Battle-Cry o' Freedom,' an' sech like songs, kase he says it's his flag, an' he's only 'sprised dat everybody don't rally roun' it. I reckon der's ez much ez a dozen white folks in all. Some ez you wouldn't 'spect on't, tu. You'd du us proud ef you'd come down, Mars' Kunnel."
"Who's your president, Andy?"
"Wal, sometimes one, an' sometimes anudder, jes' accor'din' tu who's scholard enuff tu take de lead," answered Andy, with ready pride in his new toy.
The idea was very amusing to the Fool; and, the more he thought of it, the more he was convinced that it might be a valuable training-school to the inchoate citizens of the lately rebellious States. Even while he was discussing the facts which surrounded him, he could not realize them; and he quite forgot, in giving his assent to this idea, the fact that he was living at the South, among a people who did not kindly brook differences of opinion among equals, and who would be sure to resent with an implacable hostility any society which not only recognized the political autonomy of the recently subject race, but also encouraged that race to look up to the government their masters had failed to destroy as their government, their guardian, their protector; which not only promoted ideas not in harmony with those of the former rulers of this section, but promoted the elevation of the freedman, prepared him for civil life, and gave him confidence in himself as a political integer. Had he thought of this, it is certain that he would not have consented so readily to go and see Andy's society; for what he most feared was a conflict or permanent antagonism between the freedmen and their former masters; and he thought that any sacrifice, not going to the substance of their liberties, ought to be made rather than that such a conflict should be risked.
However, stumbling over these apparent facts, he went on the next Tuesday night to the schoolhouse in the suburbs of Verdenton. It
was just beyond the line of Warrington; and the little village which had grown up on his own estate was but a continuation of the suburb, which, as in all Southern cities, had been tacitly given up to the blacks since the close of the war. It was a long, low building, made for service, — one of that numerous array of buildings which was mainly furnished to the recently emancipated seeker after knowledge by the systematic bounty of that much abused institution, the Freedmen's Bureau. Acting in conjunction with various religious and benevolent societies of the North, it furnished a class of buildings better adapted to the needs of those for whom they were designed, and affording greater results, than was ever done in all history with like means. In every village of the South was erected one or more of these rough wooden buildings, consisting only of roof, rafter, walls and floor of undressed plank. The minimum of cost and the maximum of space were the objects kept constantly in view, and usually attained beyond all question. These houses became to the colored people what the court of the temple was to the Jews, — the place of assembly and worship, as well as of instruction. They were usually unsectarian; and it was no unusual spectacle to see two or tree denominations worshiping in the same house, while the school was under the management and control of still another.
A Fool's Errand & Bricks without Straw Page 11
