A Fool's Errand & Bricks without Straw

by Albion Winegar Tourgée

  1. That the ignorant or inept citizen neglecting to list his poll for taxation should be liable to indictment and fine for such refusal or neglect.

  2. That if unable to pay such tax and fine and the costs of prosecution, he should be imprisoned and his labor sold to the highest bidder until this claim of the State upon his poverty should be fully redeemed.

  3. That the employer should be liable to pay the personal taxes of his employees, and might recoup himself from any wages due to said hirelings or to become due.

  4. To add a further safeguard, in many instances they made the exercise of the elective franchise dependent upon the payment of such tax.

  Should the effete monarchies of the Old World ever deign to glance at our civil polity, they will learn that taxation is the only sure and certain cure for pauperism, and we may soon look for their political economists to render thanks to the "friends" of the former slave for this discovery of a specific for the most ancient of governmental ills!

  The song that has been given shows one of the views which a race having little knowledge of political economy took of this somewhat peculiar but perhaps necessary measure of governmental finance.

  The group broke up soon after Nimbus arrived, and Berry, following him upon the porch said, as he laid his banjo in the window:

  "Wal, an' what did de Cap'n say 'bout my case 'gin Marse Granville

  Sykes?"

  "He said you could indict him, an' hev him fined by de court ef he turned yer off on 'count ob yer perlitical principles."

  "Bully fer de Cap'n!" said Berry, "dat's what I'll do, straight away. Yah, yah! won't dat er be fun, jes makin' ole Mahs'r trot up ter de lick-log fer meanness ter a nigger? Whoop! h'yer she goes!" and spreading his hands he made "a cart-wheel" and rolled on his outstretched hands and feet half way to the gate, and then turned a handspring back again, to show his approval of the advice given by the attorney.

  "An' he says," continued Nimbus, who had looked seriously on at his kinsman's antics, "dat yer can sue him an' git yer wages fer de whole year, ef yer kin show dat he put yer off widout good reason."

  "Der ain't no mite ob trouble 'bout dat ar, nary mite," said Berry, confidently. "You knows what sort uv a wuk-hand I is in de crap, Bre'er Nimbus?"

  "Yes, I knows dat," was the reply; "but de cap'n sez dat it mout take two or tree year ter git dese cases fru de court, an' dar must, of co'se, be a heap ob cost an' trouble 'bout 'em."

  "An' he's right tu', Bre'er Nimbus," said Berry seriously.

  "Dat's so, Berry," answered Nimbus, "an' on account ob dat, an' der fac' dat yer hain't got no money an' can't afford ter resk de wages dat yer family needs ter lib on, an' 'cause 'twould make smart ob feelin' an' yer don't stan' well fer a fa'r show afore de court an' jury, kase of yer color, he sez yer'd better jes thank de Lo'd fer gittin' off ez well ez yer hev, an' try ter look out fer breakers in de futur. He sez ez how it's all wrong an' hard an' mean an' all dat, but he sez, tu, dat yer ain't in no sort ob fix ter make a fight on't wid Marse Sykes. Now, what you think, Berry?"

  The person addressed twirled his narrow-brimmed felt hat upon his finger for a time and then said, looking suddenly up at the other:

  "Uncle Nimbus, Berry's right smart ob a fool, but damn me ef I don't b'lieve de Cap'n's in de right on't. What you say, now?"

  Nimbus had seated himself and was looking toward the darkening west with a gloomy brow. After a moment's silence he said:

  "I'se mighty feared yer both right, Bre'er Berry. But it certain ar' a mighty easy way ter git wuk fer nothin', jes ter wait till de crap's laid by an' den run a man off kase he happens ter go ter a political meetin'! 'Pears like tain't much more freedom dan we hed in ole slave-times."

  "Did it ebber'ccur ter you. Uncle Nimbus," said Berry, very thoughtfully, "dat dis yer ting freedom waz a durn curus affair fer we cullud people, ennyhow?"

  "Did it ever? Wal, now, I should tink it hed, an' hit 'ccurs ter me now dat it's growin' quarer an' quarer ebbery day. Though I'se had less on't ter bear an' puzzle over than a-most enny on ye, dat I hez, I don't know whar it'll wuk out. 'Liab sez de Lord's a doin' His own wuk in His own way, which I 'specs is true; but hit's a big job, an' He's got a quare way ob gittin' at it, an' seems ter be a-takin' His own time fer it, tu. Dat's my notion."

  It was no doubt childish for these two simple-minded colored men to take this gloomy view of their surroundings and their future. They should have realized that the fact that their privileges were insecure and their rights indefensible was their own misfortune, perhaps even their fault. They should have remembered that the susceptibilities of that race among whom their lot had been cast by the compulsion of a strange providence, were such as to be greatly irritated by anything like a manly and independent exercise of rights by those who had been so long accounted merely a superior sort of cattle. They should not have been at all surprised to find their race helpless and hopeless before the trained and organized power of the whites, controlled by the instinct of generations and animated by the sting of defeat.

  All this should have been clear and plain to them, and they should have looked with philosophic calmness on the abstract rights which the Nation had conferred and solemnly guaranteed to them, instead of troubling themselves about the concrete wrongs they fancied they endured. Why should Berry Lawson care enough about attending a political meeting to risk provoking his employer's displeasure by so doing; or why, after being discharged, should he feel angry at the man who had merely enforced the words of his own contract? He was a free man; he signed the contract, and the courts were open to him as they were to others, if he was wronged. What reason was there for complaint or apprehension, on his part?

  Yet many a wiser head than that of Berry Lawson, or even that of his more fortunate kinsman, the many-named Nimbus, has been sorely puzzled to understand how ignorance and poverty and inexperience should maintain the right, preserve and protect themselves against opposing wisdom, wealth and malicious skill, according to the spirit and tenor of the Reconstruction Acts. But it is a problem which ought to trouble no one, since it has been enacted and provided by the Nation that all such persons shall have all the rights and privileges of citizens. That should suffice.

  However, the master-key to the feeling which these colored men noted and probed in their quiet evening talk was proclaimed aloud by the county newspaper which, commenting on the meeting at Red Wing and the dismissal of a large number of colored people who attended it in opposition to the wish of their employers, said:

  "Our people are willing that the colored man should have all his rights of person and of property; we desire to promote his material welfare; but when he urges his claim to political right, he offers a flagrant insult to the white race. We have no sympathy to waste on negro-politicians or those who sympathize with and encourage them." [Footnote: Taken from the Patriot-Democrat, Clinton, La., Oct 1876.]

  The people of Horsford county had borne a great deal from negro-domination. New men had come into office by means of colored votes, and the old set to whom office had become a sort of perquisite were deprived thereby of this inherited right. The very presence of Nimbus and a few more who like him were prosperous, though in a less degree, had been a constant menace to the peace of a community which looked with peculiar jealousy upon the colored man in his new estate. This might have been endured with no evil results had their prosperity been attended with that humility which should characterize a race so lately lifted from servitude to liberty. It was the "impudent" assertion of their "rights" that so aggravated and enraged the people among whom they dwelt. It was not so much the fact of their having valuable possessions, and being entitled to pay for their labor, that was deemed such an outrage on the part of the colored race, but that they should openly and offensively use those possessions to assert those rights and continually hold language which only "white men" had a right to use. This was more than a community, educated as the Southerners had been, could be expected peaceably to endure.

  As a
farmer, a champion tobacco-grower and curer, as the most prosperous man of his race in that section, Horsford was not without a certain pride in Nimbus; but when he asserted the right of his people to attend a political meeting without let or hindrance, losing only from their wages as hirelings the price of the time thus absent, he was at once marked down as a "dangerous" man. And when it was noised abroad that he had proposed that all the colored men of the county should band together to protect themselves against this evil, as he chose to regard it, he was at once branded not only as "dangerous" but as a "desperate" and "pestiferous" nigger, instead of being considered merely "sassy," as theretofore.

  So this meeting and its results had the effect to make Nimbus far more active in political matters than he had ever been before, since he honestly believed that their rights could only be conserved by their political co-operation. To secure this he travelled about the country all the time he could spare from his crop, visiting the different plantations and urging his political friends to stand firm and not be coaxed or driven away from the performance of their political duty. By this means he became very "obnoxious" to the "best people" of Horsford, and precipitated a catastrophe that might easily have been avoided had he been willing to enjoy his own good fortune, instead of clamoring about the collective rights of his race.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  MOTES IN THE SUNSHINE

  Table of Contents

  Mollie Ainslie's third year of teacher's life was drawing near its close. She had promised her brother to remain at the South during that time in order that she might escape the perils of their native climate. She was of vigorous constitution but of slight build, and he dreaded lest the inherited scourge should take an ineradicable hold upon her system. She had passed her school-girl life with safety; but he rightly judged that a few years in the genial climate where she then was would do very much toward enabling her to resist the approaches of disease.

  The work in which she had been engaged had demanded all her energies and commanded all her devotion. Commencing with the simplest of rudimentary training she had carried some of her pupils along until a fair English education had been achieved. One of these pupils had already taken the place vacated a few months before by Lucy Ellison, since which time Mollie had occupied alone the north rooms of the old hostelry — a colored family who occupied the other portion serving as protectors, and bringing her meals to her own apartments. A friend had spent a portion of this time with her, a schoolmate whose failing health attested the wisdom of the condition her dying brother had imposed in regard to herself. As the warm weather approached this friend had returned to her New England home, and Mollie Ainslie found herself counting the days when she might also take her flight.

  Her work had not grown uninteresting, nor had she lost any of her zeal for the unfortunate race she had striven to uplift; but her heart was sick of the terrible isolation that her position forced upon her. She had never once thought of making companions, in the ordinary sense, of those for whom she labored. They had been so entirely foreign to her early life that, while she labored unremittingly for their advancement and entertained for many of them the most affectionate regard, there was never any inclination to that friendly intimacy which would have been sure to arise if her pupils had been of the same race as herself. She recognized their right most fully to careful and polite consideration; she had striven to cultivate among them gentility of deportment; but she had longed with a hungry yearning for friendly white faces, and the warm hands and hearts of friendly associates.

  Her chief recreation in this impalpable loneliness — this Chillon of the heart in which she had been bound so long — was in daily rides upon her horse, Midnight. Even in her New England home she had been passionately fond of a horse, and while at school had been carefully trained in horsemanship, being a prime favorite with the old French riding-master who had charge of that branch of education in the seminary of her native town. Midnight, coming to her from the dying hand of her only brother, had been to her a sacred trust and a pet of priceless value. All her pride and care had centered upon him, and never had horse received more devoted attention. As a result, horse and rider had become very deeply attached to each other. Each knew and appreciated the other's good qualities and varying moods. For many months the petted animal had shown none of that savageness with which his owner had before been compelled occasionally to struggle. He had grown sleek and round, but had lost his viciousness, so far as she was concerned, and obeyed her lightest word and gesture with a readiness that had made him a subject of comment in the country around, where the "Yankee school-marm" and her black horse had become somewhat noted.

  There was one road that had always been a favorite with the horse from the very first. Whenever he struck that he pressed steadily forward, turning neither to the right or left until he came to a rocky ford five miles below, which his rider had never permitted him to cross, but from which he was always turned back with difficulty — at first with a troublesome display of temper, and at the last, with evident reluctance.

  It was in one of her most lonely moods, soon after the incidents we have just narrated, that Mollie Ainslie set out on one of her customary rides. In addition to the depression which was incident to her own situation, she was also not a little disturbed by the untoward occurrences affecting those for whom she had labored so long. She had never speculated much in regard to the future of the freedmen, because she had considered it as assured. Growing to womanhood in the glare of patriotic warfare, she had the utmost faith in her country's honor and power. To her undiscriminating mind the mere fact that this honor and power were pledged to the protection and elevation of the negro had been an all-sufficient guarantee of the accomplishment of that pledge. In fact, to her mind, it had taken on the reality and certainty of a fact already accomplished. She had looked forward to their prosperity as an event not to be doubted. In her view Nimbus and Eliab Hill were but feeble types of what the race would "in a few brief years" accomplish for itself. She believed that the prejudice that prevailed against the autonomy of the colored people would be suppressed, or prevented from harmful action by the national power, until the development of the blacks should have shown them to be of such value in the community that the old-time antipathy would find itself without food to exist upon longer.

  She had looked always upon the rosy side, because to her the country for which her brother and his fellows had fought and died was the fairest and brightest thing upon earth. There might be spots upon the sun's face, but none were possible upon her country's escutcheon. So she had dreamed and had fondly pictured herself as doing both a patriot's and a Christian's duty in the work in which she had been engaged. She felt less of anger and apprehension with regard to the bitter and scornful whites than of pity and contempt for them, because they could not appreciate the beauty and grandeur of the Nation of which they were an unwilling part, and of the future that lay just before. She regarded all there had been of violence and hate as the mere puerile spitefulness of a subjugated people. She had never analyzed their condition or dreamed that they would ever be recognized as a power which might prove dangerous either to the freedman's rights or to the Nation itself.

  The recent events had opened her eyes. She found that, unknown to herself, knowledge had forced itself upon her mind. As by a flash the fact stood revealed to her consciousness that the colored man stood alone. The Nation had withdrawn its arm. The flag still waved over him, but it was only as a symbol of sovereignty renounced — of power discarded. Naked privileges had been conferred, but the right to enforce their recognition had been abandoned. The weakness and poverty of the recent slave was pitted alone and unaided against the wealth and power and knowledge of the master. It was a revelation of her own thought to herself, and she was stunned and crushed by it.

  She was no statesman, and did not comprehend anything of those grand policies whose requirements over-balance all considerations of individual right — in comparison with which races and nations a
re but sands upon the shore of Time. She little realized how grand a necessity lay at the back of that movement which seemed to her so heartless and inexcusable. She knew, of course, vaguely and weakly, that the Fathers made a Constitution on which our government was based. She did not quite understand its nature, which was very strange, since she had often heard it expounded, and as a matter of duty had read with care several of those books which tell us all about it.

  She had heard it called by various names in her far New England home by men whom she loved and venerated, and whose wisdom and patriotism she could not doubt. They had called it "a matchless inspiration" and "a mass of compromises;" "the charter of liberty" and "a league with Hell;" "the tocsin of liberty" and "the manacle of the slave." She felt quite sure that nobler-minded, braver-hearted men than those who used these words had never lived, yet she could not understand the thing of which they spoke so positively and so passionately. She did not question the wisdom or the patriotism of the Fathers who had propounded this enigma. She thought they did the best they knew, and knew the best that was at that time to be known.

  She had never quite believed them to be inspired, and she was sure they had no models to work after. Greece and Rome were not republics in the sense of our day, and in their expanded growth did not profess to be, at any time; Switzerland and San Marino were too limited in extent to afford any valuable examples; Venice while professedly a republic had been as unique and inimitable as her own island home. Then there were a few experiments here and there, tentative movements barren of results, and that was all that the civilized world had to offer of practical knowledge of democracy at that time. Beyond this were the speculations of philosophers and the dreams of poets. Or perhaps the terms should be reversed, for the dreams were oft-times more real and consistent than the lucubrations. From these she did not doubt that our ancient sages took all the wisdom they could gather and commingled it with the riper knowledge of their own harsh experience.