"What do you know about Jerry Hunt?" asked the judge, as soon as he could master his emotion.
"I know a heap about his death," said Kirkwood, with a sigh, — "a heap more'n I wish I did."
"Is it that you wish to tell me about?"
"Yes, — that for one thing."
"Well," said the judge, "this thing must be done deliberately and in order. You remember my caution. — Colonel Servosse, will you take a pen, and write down what Mr. Kirkwood says. — Please lock the door, Mr. Eyebright, so that we may not be interrupted."
Eyebright did as directed. Servosse placed himself at a table with writing-materials before him; and the judge continued, —
"Now, Mr. Kirkwood, we will hear any thing you have to say. Speak slowly, so that it may be written down. Take your own course and your own time."
"Well," said Kirkwood, "I suppose you wish to know it all. I was a student here at Verdenton in the year 18 — . I belonged to the Klan, — almost all the boys in the school did. I belonged to Camp No. 4, which met at Martin's most of the time. The sheriff, Colonel Abert, was a member, and was one of the officers. I think he was what they call a South Commander. My uncle was one of the officers too. We were all sworn to obey orders. The oath was very strong; and we were all sworn to kill anybody who did not obey, or who revealed any of the secrets of the order. I was at Mr. Hoyt's school — had been there better than a year: I was preparing for the ministry then. I had been on two or three raids when people were whipped, and never thought much about it: in fact, it seemed right good fun, riding round in disguise at night, frightening niggers, and white folks too sometimes. I didn't think much about whether it was right or not. There were plenty of old men in it who decided all such things, and men that I had always been accustomed to think well of: so I supposed it was all right.
"One day my uncle came in and brought my horse. He put him in Mr. Crather's barn. Then he came to me, and told me that Camp No. 4 had got a decree from a Rockford camp to make a raid in Verdenton. You know that is the way they do. A camp hardly ever executes its own decree. They send it to another camp, or two or three others; and the camps that get it have to detail men to execute it. He said our camp would send a squad which would meet another squad from Camp No. 9, at the forks of the road near the Widow Foster's; and I was ordered to meet them, and act as guide for them, as I was well acquainted about Verdenton. He asked me if I knew where about half a dozen white men and about as many of the leading niggers lived. I told him I did. He said my disguise was in my saddle-bags on the colt. I was to meet the raid just above the Widow Foster's at nine o'clock.
"I thought it was all right; and, when the hour came, I rode out to the Widow Foster's, and met our folks. Pretty soon afterward the party came from No. 9. The East Commander of that camp was among them, and he took charge. His name is Watson. He's here in the county yet. We went into an old pine field opposite the Widow Foster's, and put on our disguises. We had just been in our own clothes before.
"Then Watson took command, and organized the raid very strictly. He asked me if I knew Jerry Hunt's house. I told him I did. He said that was the man they wanted. Then he said that they had a decree from the Rockford Camp to visit the extreme penalty (that meant kill, always) on Jerry Hunt, but nothing was said as to how: so he left that to the camp then. It was voted that it should be by hanging. I don't reckon anybody voted against it.
"Then we started on. I rode beside Mr. Watson, in the lead. When we came near the colored village west of the town, he ordered out pickets to stop on every corner, and some patrollers to ride up and down the streets, and prevent any interruption. They had orders to shoot anybody that gave the alarm, or interfered with them at all. Then we went to Jerry Hunt's house; and Mr. Watson tried the door, and it wasn't even locked. He opened it, and thought at first there was nobody there. Then we went in; and Watson struck a match, and there was Uncle Jerry, laying there on the bed, sleeping as quiet and peaceful as a child. We waked him up, took the bed-cord out of the bed, and tied him on to the horse next to the one I rode. He never said nothing after we waked him up, only, 'Lord Jesus, have mercy!' 'Father, forgive 'em!' and 'Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly!' At least, I didn't understand any thing more. He was praying all the way in, and never offered any resistance at all.
"When we got in there, they rode down by the trees nigh the Court-House. I had been feeling mighty bad all the way; and when they halted, and began to make preparations, I rode out towards the Court-House, so as not to see any thing more."
He stopped abruptly.
"Well, did you see any thing more?"
"Yes," he responded with a sigh. "I couldn't help looking around after a while; and, just as I did so, some one drew a match, and held it up, and I saw the face of Uncle Jerry as he hung there on the limb. I've been seeing it ever since, gentlemen."
"Did you recognize any of the men?" said the judge.
"Must I answer that?" asked Kirkwood.
"Just as you choose," said the judge coolly. "You have already confessed enough for your own conviction."
"Of course," said Kirkwood thoughtfully. "And they got me into this trouble, and thousands of other good young men too. I'm going to make a clean breast of it, gentlemen, and tell all I know. Any conscience would not be any easier, if I screened these men, than it is now. Yes, I recognized a good many."
Then he named some forty men whom he could remember having seen, and said he had nothing more to say about it. What he had said was read over to him, and signed by him.
"I shall have to hold you to answer a charge of murder, Mr. Kirkwood," said the judge, with a choked voice.
"I suppose so," said Kirkwood. "And I'm guilty: I don't deny the fact. But I shall sleep quiet to-night, which is what I haven't done before since that night. I've only one request to make, Judge."
"What is that?"
"Don't send me to the jail in Verdenton. I don't want to dodge or run — 'twouldn't do any good to do so now, — but, you know, if I were put in that jail now, I'd be hanging on the same limb they hung Jerry Hunt on, before two days were over."
It was arranged that he should be held in custody without being sent to jail at that time. And then the three overwrought men turned to each other, and clasped hands solemnly, with the full conviction that " the bottom had indeed fallen out" and that thereafter it might be said of that section, that "the nights are wholesome."
There had been many knocks at the door in the mean time. It was now opened, and their friends who crowded in were briefly informed of the facts. Servosse slipped away into the house, and informed his wife and daughter.
But the night was not yet ended. By some strange intuition, these facts seemed only transpired almost before they had taken place. Others came to confess other crimes, and to confirm the confession of young Kirkwood. Hour by hour evidence accumulated, until, that very night, all the ramifications of the Klan in that county, and much in adjacent ones, were laid bare before the magistrate. It was a strange scene indeed; and the party who had assembled at Warrington in expectation of a night of vigil were kept awake by excitement, surprise, and gratitude at the marvelous turn of affairs.
Thomas Denton was one of those men who believed that crime should be punished, not from resentment toward the offenders, but for what he deemed the safety of others, and especially the well-being of future generations. He therefore began the next day to issue the proper processes of law, and pushed with vigor the prosecutions, sitting day by day as a committing magistrate, taking the confessions of hundreds whose awakened fears laid bare the hidden mechanism of thousands of acts of violence. Those whose confessions related to the most trivial and unimportant of the personal outrages were released upon their own recognizances merely, or were dismissed with a sharp rebuke. Those guilty of more serious crimes were bound as witnesses. Many arrests were made, and a universal reign of terror of the law seemed impending among those who had so recently terrorized others. Already the line of examination was threatening hun
dreds who had been unsuspected, and had involved other hundreds who were deemed equally immaculate.
No one was more astounded or distressed at the revelations made than the Fool. He could not understand how men of the highest Christian character, of the most exalted probity, and of the keenest sense of honor, could be the perpetrators, encouragers, or excusers of such acts. He thought that the churches ought to be hung in black, that the pulpit should resound with warning, and the press teem with angry denunciation. He could not understand how the one should be silent, and the other should palliate or excuse. Of excuse or palliation he did not deem that there could be any thing worthy of consideration. The suggestion that it was personal hostility, or a semi-public animosity against individuals, which animated these acts of violence, he deemed unworthy of a moment's thought, for three reasons, — because it was negatived by the purpose and scope of the organization, because it was denied by all the confessions of repentant members, and because the victims were uniformly of one mode of political thought, or had specific relations which placed them in antagonism with the purposes of the organization.
Yet the pulpit kept silent, and the press excused. The Fool knew not what to think. There were hundreds of these men whom he knew well, and esteemed highly. Were they deliberately savage and vicious, or was he in error? Was there any absolute standard of right, or were religion and morality merely relative and incidental terms? Was that right in Georgia which was wrong in Maine? Were those ideas of liberty and of universal right, in which he had been reared, eternal principles, or merely convictions, — impulses of the moment? He could not tell. He began to doubt even his own experience and reason.
Never was the horror which attended this secret organization so fully realized. Even those who had suffered most were moved to pity. Now that the law, stern and inexorable, was about to lay its hand upon them, the cry for charity and mercy came up from every corner. The beauty of peace and recognition was heralded throughout the land.
Fortunately, the Legislatures of the several States were in session, and most of them passed immediately an act of amnesty and pardon for all who had committed acts of violence in disguise, or at the instigation of any secret organization; and in the excess of their zeal, and lest it should be supposed that they desired to screen only their friends, they extended their mantle of forgiveness so as to cover apparently the innocent as well as the guilty; those who sought no pardon, as well as the kneeling suppliants. In short, they pardoned not only the perpetrators of these outrages, but, in a reckless determination to forgive, they even pardoned the victims! In this act of wholesale forgiveness they included not only the members of the "Ku-Klux Klan," the "Invisible Empire," the "Constitutional Union Guards," and other organizations which had constituted orders or degrees of the Klan, but also the members of the "Union Leagues," "Red Strings," and other secret societies, for all acts done in pursuance of the counsels of such societies. Strangely enough these societies were not known to have counseled any unlawful acts; but these legislators were bound to show that "the quality of mercy is not strained."
They took care, however, not to pardon any, even the least, infraction of the law, or assumption of power, committed by the Executive, or any one in authority, for the purpose and with the intent of repressing and punishing such acts, or protecting the helpless victims therof. There are some things which can not be forgiven, even in an era of "reconciliation"!
So the Ku-Klux was buried; and such is the influence of peace and good-will, when united with amnesty and pardon, that in a twelvemonth it was forgotten, and he who chanced to refer to so old and exploded a joke was greeted with the laughter-provoking cry of the "bloody shirt."
CHAPTER XXXIX
"LIGHT SHINETH IN DARKNESS"
Table of Contents
WELL, time went on; and, twelve years from the day when Lee surrendered under the apple-tree at Appomattox, there was another surrender, and the last of the governments organized under the policy of reconstruction fell into the hands of those who had inaugurated and carried on war against the Nation; who had openly opposed the theory of reconstruction, had persistently denied its legality or the binding nature of its promises, and had finally, with secret, organized violence, suppressed and neutralized the element on which it had depended for support. It was true, that, in form and letter, the laws of that period remained: in spirit and in substance they were abrogated. Yet the Nation looked on without wonder or alarm, and by its executive head testified a somewhat more than tacit approval of the result.
That those governments should fail was no matter of surprise to the Fool. He had anticipated and foretold failure from the first. He had always believed that they were prenatally infected with the seeds of fatal disease. He had looked for them to disappear. Their dissolution, and the resumption of some other relation to the government, would hardly have surprised him. He was ready to acknowledge that the rule of majorities, when majorities are composed of the weak, illiterate, and poor, is not likely to be successful. All that was involved in the failure of practical reconstruction he was ready to admit, and willing to see the steps taken in error retraced. For a time, however, he was staggered to note what an utter reversal of the decision made upon the field of battle had been effected.
Then he began to study the matter more in the aggregate, and found that he had hitherto been blinded by details. The object-plate on which he gazed had been too near the retina to be clearly pictured thereon. He reviewed the course of events from ante bellum times; and what he now saw was this: —
First, A people proud, brave, and fond of self-laudation, who had been joined in formal union with a people less showy, but more thrifty; less boastful, but more resolute; less self-assertive, but more industrious. In this union the former had ruled, until the right to dominate had seemed almost inherent; and finally, when their will was thwarted by an aroused majority, earnestly believing themselves to be oppressed beyond endurance, they flew to arms, and contested with marvelous courage and tenacity for the right to sever the compact which bound them to the other. Failing in this, they were at the will of the conqueror; to which they submitted sullenly, but silently, not deeming it a matter of right, not enforced by any sense of duty or obligation of honor, but simply yielding because they had been conquered, and were compelled to submit.
Second, among the terms prescribed for this subjugated people was one condition which required that a lately servile race dwelling among them — which was of necessity not only servile, but poor and ignorant — should be admitted to an equal share and voice in the government with themselves. This race, as it chanced, was earnestly and devoutly regarded by them as inherently and unutterably inferior and degraded, so that even its generic name had become an epithet of scorn and contempt. Until the hour of their subjugation, this inferior race had not been regarded by them or the nation as worthy of possessing any inherent rights. The law had regarded them as mere chattels; and it had passed into a proverb in the nation, that they had "no rights which white men were bound to respect." To buy, to sell, to task, to whip, to mayhem this race at will, had been from immemorial days a right which the now subjugated people had claimed and exercised, and which had been conceded and admitted in their previous union with their conquerors. It had also been a part of their religious belief, and had been taught from their pulpits, together with other truths which they deemed sacred, that this inferior race was divinely created and ordained to be subject and subordinate to their white fellow-creatures, so that any attempt to change their relations was looked upon as a subversion of the divine will.
Third, This elevation of a race regarded as such inferiors, marked by a distinctive color which of itself had become a badge of shame and infamy, to be co-ordinate in power with that people who had but lately dominated the nation, and had then given four years of inconceivable suffering and blood and toil for the right to keep them in slavery, which they deemed to have been imperiled by their confederates in the government, was, very naturally, mos
t exasperating and humiliating to the conquered people. They deemed it a blow in the face, given in the mere wantonness of power, and for the sole purpose of revenge. To them it was an act intended and designed to humiliate and degrade them, simply because, in the conflict of arms to which they had appealed, they had been unsuccessful. They thought it a gratuitous and needless affront to a brave and unfortunate foe, and their resentment burned hotly against an enemy who could do an act of such dastardly malice.
Yet, after it was imposed, they seemed without remedy. They were subject, broken, scattered. An appeal to arms was hopeless. The power which had but recently forced them to submission was still more potent and compact than when the battle was joined before. Its armies in considerable force were scattered over the subject territory, and those which had been disbanded needed but one blast of the trumpet to fall again into line; while those of the subject people were hopelessly shattered and disheartened, their armaments gone, and the power and opportunity to organize and concentrate impossible to be obtained.
However, such was the indomitable spirit of this people, that they scorned to yield or submit to what they deemed oppression. They denounced with unparalleled temerity these terms of restoration as unjust and infamous, and openly declared that they would obey and regard the laws and acts passed and done in pursuance thereof, in so far as it was absolutely impossible for them to avoid doing otherwise — and no farther. They gave full and fair notice that they would resist, evade, nullify, and destroy these laws and the work done under them, as soon as opportunity should occur so to do, in any manner that might offer. It was a defiance openly and fairly given; and to the redemption of this challenge was plighted the honor of a people even more scrupulous of their collective than of their individual rights, exasperated by defeat, and aroused by a sense of unparalleled and unpardonable wrong and oppression.
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