The Ringfield Swashbuckler (two days afterwards) said, —
"The niggers of Rockford are in tribulation, but the white people of the good old county will sleep easier. It appears, that, after the adjournment of the mass meeting held by the good people of that county at the court-house on the 17th inst., Walters, the infamous scalawag leader of the nigger Radicals, who have ruled the county since the military usurpation, could not be found. He was supposed to have been in attendance on the meeting as a spy upon its action; but several of the most respectable citizens say that he left a considerable time before its close. At once, upon its becoming known that he was missing, there was great excitement among the niggers; and when, towards morning, his body was found in one of the offices upon the lower floor of the court-house, there was great apprehension for a time that the town would be burned by the infuriated blacks. The manner of his death is a mystery. It is generally believed that some of the leading negroes, who have for some time been growing restive under his dictatorship, waylaid him as he came down from the meeting, killed him, put his body in this room, and then raised an alarm over his disappearance, hoping thereby at once to get rid of a troublesome leader, and produce the impression that he was murdered by his opponents, and for political effect. Of course such a claim is too ridiculous to be entertained for a moment. We learn that an inquest was held, but nothing was elicited to cast any light upon the mystery."
The Verdenton Gazette, in its next issue, remarked, —
"The death of that infamous Radical, Walters of Rockford County, is making a great excitement. The Radicals pretend to believe that he was killed by the Democrats, who had been holding a nominating convention in the court-house that afternoon. It is far more probable, indeed some circumstances which have since come to light, render it almost certain, that his death was procured by certain of his Radical associates. The Carpet-baggers and scalawags who run that party are fully aware of the fate which awaits them on election-day, unless something can be done to fire the negro heart, and bring troops into the State. It is therefore generally believed that this killing of Walters was a cold-blooded assassination planned by the Radicals at the Capital, and executed by their minions. It is even asserted that Morton was heard to declare, not many days ago, that we would 'hear h — ll from the South in less than a week.' In addition to this, it is said that a very reputable man, residing in the western part of that county, declares that he saw Colonel Tom Kelly, the chairman of the Radical committee for this district, driving rapidly away from Rockford very soon after four o'clock on that evening, — about the time the murder must have been committed. Perhaps Mr. Tom Kelly will now rise and explain what he was doing in Rockford at that time."
The Central Keynote (published a week afterwards) said, —
"Whether the Radical bummer Walters was killed by some of his nigger understrappers, by some of his Carpet-bag scalawag associates who were jealous of his power, by his own relatives, or by some paramour of his wife who was anxious that she should obtain the large amount of insurance which he had upon his life, we do not know. But one thing we do know, that the State is well rid of a miserable, unprincipled Radical and infamous scoundrel, who ought to have been a Carpet-bagger, but, we are sorry to admit, was a native. We sincerely trust that the State at large may share the good fortune of the county of Rockford very soon, and be equally well rid of his Radical associates."
The National Trumpet, which was the Radical organ for the State, very naturally gave a different version of the affair, denounced it as a most outrageous political murder, and inveighed most bitterly against what it termed the inhuman barbarity of the opposition journals, which, not content with the death of Walters, sought to slay his good name by slanderous imputation, and to blast the reputation of the stricken widow with baseless hints of complicity in his death. It pronounced him "a faithful husband, a tender father, and a stanch friend, — one who from obscure parentage had raised himself through poverty and ignorance to competence; had aided orphan brothers and sisters, supported a widowed mother, and maintained a good Christian character until expelled from his church on account of his political opinions. His courage and organizing ability were unquestioned, and under his lead it was well known that nothing could prevent the County of Rockford from continuing to give overwhelming Radical majorities. John Walters was guilty of this offence, no more! And for this he was killed! He gave up his life for the rights of the people — the right of equal manhood-suffrage — as clearly as any soldier who fell upon the battlefield died for liberty! The time will come when his name will be remembered by a grateful people as that of a martyr of their freedom."
So the act passed into current history; and the great journals of the North recorded with much minuteness, and with appropriate head-lines and display, the fact that John Walters, a man of infamous character, and a prominent politician, and leader of the negroes in Rockford County, was killed by stabbing and strangling. By whom the crime was committed was by no means clear, they said, nor yet the motive; but one thing seemed to be well established, — that it was not done from any political incentive whatever. It was true he was a leading Radical politician in a county having a decided colored majority, which was made effective almost solely by his organizing power; but it was certain that only personal feeling of some sort or another was at the bottom of this murder.
Thus it first came to the Fool's ears. He had known the man, not intimately, but well, having seen him often since their meeting at the League, and had grown into a sincere regard for him. He knew of his energy and daring, knew of his own premonitions as to his fate, and the coolness with which he had prepared himself to meet it. But the Fool had only half believed that it would come, — at least not so soon or suddenly, nor in a form so horrible, nor with such ghastly accompaniment of post mortem barbarity. It was strange how unreasoning he was in his sorrowful anger. He would not hear a word as to any other hypothesis of his friend's death, except that it was a political murder, coolly planned, and executed with the assent of the entire meeting of respectable men who were passing patriotic resolutions above the scene of its perpetration. It was very unreasonable, but perhaps not unnatural, that he should do so.
II
Table of Contents
Upon the second day after this unfortunate occurrence, there came to the Fool's house one who had been an eye-and-ear witness of all that had occurred in Rockford on that occasion, except the tragic act which has been once already narrated. This man said, —
"I was with John Walters when he went to the meeting, and went up and sat with him for a short time. I had tried to dissuade him from going there at all. There had been a good deal of excitement in the county for some time. The Ku-Klux had been riding about, and his life had been threatened a good many times. Only a few days before, a crowd of them had come, and, after riding about the town, had left at his house a coffin, with a notice stuck on to it with a knife. He knew he was in great danger, and told me repeatedly that he thought they would get him before it was over. On this day he was heavily armed, and very foolishly carried with him a considerable sum of money, which he had received the day before, and intended to bring here and put in bank the next day. He had been very careful about showing himself upon the street for some time, especially after dark. I don't suppose he had been out after sundown in six months. He said that it was necessary for him to go to this meeting for two reasons, — first, to let them know that he was not afraid to do so; and, second, that he might know what course the opposition intended to pursue in the coming campaign.
"There was a very full attendance at the meeting, and when Walters came in there were a heap of sour looks cast at him. He sat down, took out his book, and began taking notes. The speakers turned on him the worst abuse you ever heard, Colonel; but he just smiled that quiet, scornful smile of his, and went on taking his notes as if no one was near him. By and by it got so hot that I thought we had better get out of there. I told him so in a whisper: but he just looked up,
and said I could go; he should stay till it was over. He wanted to see some parties there who had made some proposition to him about a compromise-ticket for county officers. He was greatly in favor of this; for, although we had a large majority in the county, we had really only one or two candidates competent to fill the county offices. It was by his advice, that, at the election before, our folks had supported the Democratic candidate for sheriff and other county-officers. He said it would never do to put ignorant and incompetent men in such places. He was greatly troubled about his own lack of education, and studied hard to make it up. I've often heard him mourn his lack of early advantages. I think it was the only thing that used to make him right-down mad. He used to say that was what every poor man owed to slavery; and he appeared to think that institution had done him as much harm, and he had as good a right to hate it, as if he had been a nigger. He could read pretty peart, but writing always come hard to him.
"I heard him one time talking about his little gal, who was just beginning to learn to read. He said he was determined she should have what he missed because he happened to be a poor man's son in a slave country; and that was an education. Oh! he was very bitter in his denunciation of the slave-holding aristocracy, and would persist in declaring that they had starved the souls of the poor people, and kept them from the tree of knowledge, just to promote their own selfish aims, and enhance their own wealth. It's the only thing I've ever heard John Walters grow eloquent upon (you know he was a man of few words); but I've heard him sometimes on the stump when he seemed to get out of himself, and be another man, in the wild eloquence with which he urged the need of education, and deplored the manner in which he had been robbed of its privileges and advantages. I remember he said once, that he never asked grace before meat at his own table, nor conducted family worship in his own house, as he did every day, without feeling ashamed of the ignorance which hung like a millstone about his neck. He thought that even his little eight-year-old must be ashamed of her papa's blunders.
"I thought of all these things while the speakers were abusing him, and the people were turning towards him with black looks and threatening gestures, and wondered what would come of it all. When it got too hot for me, I left, and went back to his house. His wife was taking on terribly. She is not a very strong woman, but she thought a heap of John. She asked me all about what he was doing at the meeting, and then took on worse than ever. She pointed to their two children who were playing on the lawn back of the house, and said, 'Poor things, poor things! They'll be fatherless and alone pretty soon. Why won't John quit this foolish fight for what will do him no good, get away from here, and go West, where he and his children can have "a white man's chance"? Why won't he listen to me?' She kept on crying and mourning, and begged me to speak to John about it if he ever came home.
"I tried to comfort her; and we sat by the door, the little children playing on the green slope before us, until the meeting was over, and the people began to pass by on their way homeward. I noticed that Mrs. Walters seemed very restless, and every now and then looked anxiously over toward the court-house. Finally she called to some colored men who were passing, and asked if the meeting was over. They told her it was; and she then asked if they had seen her husband since it closed; and, when they said they had not, she threw up her hands, and moaned, and cried, 'They've killed him! They've killed him! I knew it! Oh, my God!' and just kept taking on terribly.
"I went over into the town at once, and began to make inquiries. None of our friends had seen him; but, as soon as they found I was inquiring for him, several of the white people kindly volunteered information in regard to him. This one had seen him in this place, and another in that, and another remembered hearing a third man speak of having seen him in still a different direction; and all about the same time. This disagreement of the reports which were made, as well as the fact that none of the colored people had seen him (though there were many more of them, and each felt a peculiar interest in him, so that they would be more likely to notice and remark his presence than the others), strengthened a dim suspicion that had been growing in the minds of all; so that, instead of waiting to go to the points indicated to ascertain their truth, the report went out at once that he was missing — had been killed.
"I never knew before what a hold he had on the colored people. Every one seemed as distressed as if he had lost a brother. Men, women, and children crowded into the streets. Moans and imprecations were about equally mingled in the surging crowds who hurried toward the court-house. From the first moment there was no question as to his death. It was assumed as a fact; and the conclusion was at once arrived at, that his body was concealed somewhere about the court-house. Strangely enough the fragments of the crowd who had been in attendance on the meeting gathered quietly about one or two of the stores, talked with each other in low tones, offered neither remonstrance, aid, nor ridicule of the search that was going on, and finally broke away by twos and threes, silently and solemnly to their homes. Every moment the excitement grew more intense among the colored people. In an incredibly brief time the crowd had swelled from a couple of dozen to as many hundred; and, in an hour or two, more than a thousand were gathered. The white people of the town looked on gloomily and silently, but took no part in the search. The court-house was at once surrounded, and every room examined into which access could be obtained; for the keys of some of them were said to have been lost, and one especially, it was claimed, had not been opened for many months. All trace of the key of this room seemed to have been lost by the officials in whose custody the law presumed it to have been. Then some of the white people came with very positive reports that Walters had been seen going out of town towards Dunboro', where it was known that he intended to go on the morrow. Several of the leading citizens came out at this time, and endeavored to convince the colored people of the folly of their course. The Honorable John Snortout was especially active in this endeavor. They might as well have talked to the wind. The colored people clung to their hypothesis with a sort of blind instinctive conviction of its truth, which nothing could move. As it came on dark, fires were lighted, and a regular line of sentries put around the building. Meantime attempts were made to get a glimpse of the interior of the rooms of which they could obtain no keys, by peering through the closed windows. Clambering from one window-ledge to another, they flashed the light of blazing torches into them, but in vain. Nothing could be seen.
"And so the night dragged on, and the crowd grew hourly greater with accessions from the country, and the conviction grew stronger that in one of these rooms they would find the nameless horror which they sought, and which they yet would not behold.
"Yet this half-barbarous crowd were strangely regardful of law. They did not violate anybody's right. Neither locks nor windows were broken. They sought the keys far and near, but they did no violence. They were sure their lost leader was within — dying or dead, they knew not which. They called him by name, but knew he could not answer. None slept of the colored people: they waited, watched, and mourned.
"Just in the gray of the morning light, one of those who had been most active and assiduous in the search mounted on the shoulders of a friend, and peered into the window of the most suspected room on the first floor. Shading his eyes with his hand, he scanned the dim-lighted interior, and was about to give up the quest, when his eye fell upon something mysterious and appalling. On the inside of the window-ledge he saw — a single drop of blood! Another look, and he saw, or thought he saw, the well-known hat which their leader had been wont to wear.
"'Here he is — in there!' he shouted, as he leaped down, and started for the corridor. They had no longer any need of key. The door flew apart as if made of pasteboard, before the brawny shoulders that pressed against it. In that room they found their worst fears confirmed. There, pressed down into a box, with a pile of firewood heaped upon him, a stab in his throat, and a hard cord drawn taut about his neck, stark and cold, was the body of John Walters — the Radical! There was very
little blood in the room, only a few drops on the floor, and one drop on the window-sill! The stab in his throat had cut the artery. Where was the blood? The physician who examined the body said he must have bled internally."
From the foregoing narrative it was evident to the Fool that between three and five o'clock of the day before, while the meeting of respectable white citizens was in progress in the room above, John Walters had either been killed in that room, or murdered elsewhere, and brought thither. The manner of his death was evident. The motive was not doubtful, since, strangely enough, this "bad man" seems to have had no personal enemies. In some mysterious manner the universal sentiment of execration that prevailed against him in the community had found an instrument; and John Walters, the Radical leader of Rockford, had met the doom which he might reasonably have expected when he presumed to organize the colored voters of that county in opposition to the wish and desire of its white inhabitants.
A Fool's Errand & Bricks without Straw Page 21
