Dixie After the War Part 25

Yet between these armed camps, small human kindnesses and courtesies went on; and they joined in laughter at the comedy of their positions. Between Speakers, though, there was war to the knife, there was also common bond of misery.

The third afternoon Democrats learned that their ma.s.sacre was planned for that night. Negro roughs were congregating in the building; the Hunkidory Club, a noted gang of black desperadoes, were coming up from Charleston. A body of a.s.sa.s.sins were to be introduced into the gallery overlooking the floor of the Hall; here, even a small band could make short work its own way of any differences below. Chamberlain informed Mackey; Mackey informed Wallace. Hampton learned of the conspiracy through Ruger; he said: "If such a thing is carried out, I cannot insure the safety of your command, nor the life of a negro in the State." The city seethed with repressed anxiety and excitement. Telegrams and runners were sent out; streets filled with newcomers, some in red shirts, some in old Confederate uniforms with trousers stuffed in boots, canteens slung over shoulders.

Hampton's soldiers had come.

Twenty young men of Columbia contrived, through General Ruger, it is said, to get into the gallery, thirty into the Hall, the former armed with sledge-hammers to break open doors at first intimation of collision. The Hook and Ladder Company prepared to scale the walls. The train bringing the Hunkidory Club broke down in a swamp, aided possibly by some peace-loving agency. The crowding of Red Shirt and Rifle Clubs into the city took effect. The night pa.s.sed in intense anxiety, but in safety. Next day, Speaker Wallace read notification that at noon the Democrats, by order of President Grant, would be ejected by Federal troops if, before that time, they had not vacated the State House; in obedience to the Federal Government, he and the other Democratic members would go, protesting, however, against this Federal usurpation of authority. He adjourned the House to meet immediately in Carolina Hall. Blankets on their shoulders, they marched out. A tremendous crowd was waiting. Far as the eye could reach, Main Street was a ma.s.s of men, quiet and apparently unarmed.

I have heard one of Hampton's old captains tell how things were outside the State House. "The young men of Columbia were fully armed. Clerks in our office had arms stowed away in desks and all around the rooms; we were ready to grab them and rush on the streets at a moment's notice. It was worse than war times. We had two cannon, loaded with chips of iron, concealed in buildings, and trained on the State House windows and to rake the street. We marched to the State House in a body. General Hampton had gone inside. He had told us not to follow him. He and General Butler, his aide, had been doing everything to keep us quiet. He knew we had come to Columbia to fight if need be. 'I will tell you,' he said, 'when it is time to fight. You have made me your governor, and, by Heaven, I will be your governor!' Again and again he promised that. Usually, we obeyed him like lambs. But we followed him to the State House.

"Federal troops were stationed at the door. What right had they there? It was our State House! Why could roughs and toughs and the motley crowd of earth go in, on a pa.s.s from Doorkeeper Dennis, a Northern rascal imported by way of New Orleans, while we, the State's own sons and taxpayers, could not enter? We pressed forward. We were told not to. We did not heed. We were ready not to heed even the crossed bayonets of the guard. Things are very serious when they reach that pa.s.s. The guard in blue used the utmost patience. Federal soldiers were in sympathy with us. Colonel Bomford,[24]

their officer, ran up the State House steps, shouting: 'General Hampton!

General Hampton! For G.o.d's sake come down and send your men back!' In an instant General Hampton was on the steps, calmly waving back the mult.i.tude: 'All of you go back up the street. I told you not to come here.

Do not come into collision with the Federal troops. I advise all, white and black, who care for the public welfare to go home quietly. You have elected me your Governor, and by the eternal G.o.d, I will be your Governor!

Trust me for that! Now, go back!' We obeyed like children. On the other side of the State House a man ran frantically waving his hat and shouting: 'Go back! go back! General Hampton says go back!' This man was ex-Governor Scott, who a few years before had raised a black army for the intimidation and subjugation of South Carolina!"

The Wallace House sat, until final adjournment, in South Carolina Hall, the Mackey House in the State House. Governor Chamberlain, with the town full of Rifle Clubs supposed to be thirsting for his gore, rode back and forth in his open carriage to the State House and occupied the executive offices there, refusing to resign them to General Hampton. He was inaugurated inside the "Bayonet House"; General Hampton in the open streets. General Hampton conducted the business of the State in two office-rooms furnished with Spartan simplicity. The Wallace House said to the people: "Pay to tax collectors appointed by Governor Hampton, ten per cent of the tax rate you have been paying Governor Chamberlain's tax collectors, and we will run your Government on it." So the people paid their tax to Hampton's collectors and to no others. Without money, the Chamberlain Government fell to pieces.

Northern sentiment had undergone change. Tourists had spread far and wide the fame of Black and Tan Legislatures. Mr. Pike, of Maine, had written "The Prostrate State." In tableaux before a great ma.s.s-meeting and torchlight procession in New York, South Carolina had appeared kneeling in chains before the G.o.ddess of Liberty. The North was protesting against misuse of Federal power in the South. General Sherman said: "I have always tried to save our soldiers from the dirty work. I have always thought it wrong to bolster up weak State Governments by our troops." "Let the South alone!" was the cry. One of Grant's last messages reflected this temper.

President Hayes was exhibiting a spirit the South had not counted on. He sent for Hampton and Chamberlain to confer with him in Washington. The old hero's journey to the National Capital and back was an ovation. Soon after his return, Chamberlain resigned the keys and offices of the State House.

Chamberlain was bitter and felt that the Federal Government had played him false.

With Governor Nicholls established in Louisiana and Governor Hampton in South Carolina, the battle between the carpet-baggers and the native Southerners for their State Houses was over. The Federal soldiers packed up joyfully, and the Southerners cheered their departure.

Louisiana had been engaged in a struggle very similar to South Carolina's.

For three months she had two governors, two legislatures, two Supreme Courts. Again and again was her Capitol in a state of siege. Once two Republican parties faced each other in battle array for its possession--as two Republican parties had faced each other in Little Rock contending for Arkansas's Capitol. One morning, Louisianians woke to find the entrance commanded by United States Artillery posted on the "Midnight Order" of a drunken United States District Judge. Once a thousand negroes, impressed as soldiers, lived within the walls, eating, drinking, sleeping, until the place became unspeakably filthy and small-pox broke out. More than once for its possession there was warfare on the levees, bloodshed in barricaded streets. Once the citizens were marching joyfully to its occupation past the United States Custom House, and the United States soldiers crowded the windows, waved their caps and cheered. Once members were ejected by Federal force; Colonel de Trobriand regretting that he had the work to do and the Louisianans bearing him no grudge; it was, "Pardon me, gentlemen, I must put you out." "Pardon us, that we give you the trouble."

These corrupt governments had glamours. Officials had money to burn. New Orleans was like another Monte Carlo for one while. Gambling parlours stood open to women and minors. Then was its twenty-five-year charter granted the Louisiana State Lottery. At a garden party in Washington not long ago, a Justice of the Supreme Court said in response to some question I put: "It would take the pen of a Zola to describe reconstruction in Louisiana! It is so dark a chapter in our national history, I do not like to think of it." A Zola might base a great novel on that life and death struggle between politicians and races in the land of cotton and sugar plantations, the swamps and bayous and the mighty Mississippi, where the Carpet-Bag Governments had a standing army, of blacks chiefly, with cavalry, infantry, artillery, and navy of warships going up and down waterways; where prominent citizens were arrested on blank warrants, carried long distances, held for months; where women and children listened for the tramp, tramp, of black soldiers on piazzas, the crash of a musket on the door, the demand for the master or son of the house!

Dixie after the war is a mine for the romancer, historian, ethnologist.

Never before in any age or place did such conditions exist. The sudden invest.i.ture of the uncivilised slave with full-fledged citizenship wrought tragedy and comedy not ready to Homer's, Shakespeare's or Cervantes's pen.

The strange and curious race-madness of the American Republic will be a study for centuries to come. That madness took a child-race out of a warm cradle, threw it into the ocean of politics--the stormiest and most treacherous we have known--and bade it swim for its own life and the life of the nation!

CRIME AGAINST WOMANHOOD

CHAPTER x.x.xI

CRIME AGAINST WOMANHOOD

The rapist is a product of the reconstruction period. In the beginning he commanded observation North less by reason of what he did than by reason of what was done unto him. His chrysalis was a uniform; as a soldier he could force his way into private homes, bullying and insulting white women; he was often commissioned to tasks involving these things. He came into life in the abnormal atmosphere of a time rife with discussions of social equality theories, contentions for coeducation and intermarriage.

General Weitzel, resigning his command, wrote from La Fourche and La Teche to Butler in New Orleans: "I can not command these negro regiments. Women and children are in terror. It is heartrending."[25] General Halleck wrote, April, 1865, to General Grant of a negro corps: "A number of cases of atrocious rape by these men have already occurred. Their influence on the coloured people is reported bad. I hope you will remove it." Similar reports were made by other Federal officers. Governor Perry, of South Carolina, says: "I continued remonstrances to Secretary Seward on the employment of negro troops, gave detail of their atrocious conduct. At Newberry ... (Crozier's story). At Anderson, they protected and carried off a negro who had wantonly murdered his master. At Greenville, they knocked down citizens in the streets without slightest provocation. At Pocotaligo, they entered a gentleman's house, and after tying him, violated the ladies." Mr. Seward wrote that Northern sentiment was sensitive about negro troops. When Governor Perry handed Generals Meade and Gillmore the Pocotaligo report, General Meade said he was opposed to negro troops and was trying to rid the army of them, but had to exercise great caution not to offend Northern sentiment. General Gillmore had some offenders executed. Federal commanders largely relieved the South of black troops, but carpet-bag officials restored them in the form of militia.

I have told elsewhere Crozier's story. Let me contrast his slayers with a son of industry it was my honour to know, Uncle d.i.c.k, my father's coachman. During the war, when my father had occasion to send a large sum in gold coin through the country, Uncle d.i.c.k carried it belted around his body under his shirt. My father's ward was attending the Southern Female College in Danville when the President and his Cabinet, fleeing from Richmond, reached that place. Knowing that Danville might become a fighting center, Mr. Williams T. Davis, Princ.i.p.al, wrote my father to send for Sue. The way to reach Danville was by private conveyance, seventy miles or more. Uncle d.i.c.k, mounted high on his carriage-box, a white-headed, black-faced knight-errant of chivalry, set forth. n.o.body knew where the armies were. He might have to cut his horses loose from his carriage, mount Sue on one, himself take the other, and bring her through the forest. In due time the carriage rolled into our yard, Uncle d.i.c.k proud and happy on his box, Sue inside wrapped in rugs, sound asleep, for it was midnight. That is the way we could trust our black men.

The following account by an ex-Confederate captain shows how General Schofield handled a case of the crime which is now under discussion: "A young white girl on her way to Sunday School was attacked by a negro; 'attempted' a.s.sault, the family said; it is usually put that way; 'consummated' nails the victim to a stake. Our people were in a state of terror; they seemed paralysed; they were inured to dispossession and outrage. No one seemed to know what to do. I picked up several young men and trailed down the ruffian. Then I sent a letter to General Schofield (with whom I had some acquaintance, as we had met each other hunting), asking instructions. He sent two detectives and a file of soldiers, requesting that I call for further a.s.sistance if occasion demanded. I wrote full statement of facts, had the girl's testimony taken in private; evidence was laid before General Schofield; the negro was sent to the penitentiary for eighteen years. The promptness of his action inspired people here with hope. We had no Ku Klux in Virginia--one reason, I have always thought, was the swiftness with which punishment was meted out in that case."

I have, as I believe, from Judge Lynch himself particulars of another case in which, the law being inactive, citizens took justice into their own hands:

"Two young girls, daughters of a worthy German settler, were out to bring up cows, when attacked by a negro tramp; they ran screaming, but were overtaken; he seized the older; the younger, about ten years old, continued to run. Some pa.s.sers on the nearest road, a private and lonely one, rushed to the relief of the older girl, who was making such outcry as she could. We found her prostrate, the negro having her pinioned with one knee on either arm. His jack-knife open, was held between his teeth, and he was stuffing his handkerchief in her mouth to stifle her cries. We rescued her, took him prisoner, carried him to the nearest magistrate, a carpet-bag politician, who committed him to jail to await the action of the grand jury. He made his escape a few days afterward, was recaptured and relodged in jail. Ten days later a band was organised among respectable citizens in and around our town; a Northern settler was a member. One detachment set out about dark for the rendezvous where they met a score more of resolute, armed men, some with masks, some without.

They effected entrance into the jail, but their way was arrested when they found the prisoner in a casemated cell, which other negroes readily pointed out, one offering a lamp; a railroad section hand procured crow-bars with which the casemate was crushed in; the prisoner was taken in charge. He stood mute; seemed calm and unmoved; was put in a close carriage, the purpose being to drive him to the exact spot of his crime, but it coming on day, the company thought best to execute him at once. He was placed upon a mule; a rope attached to his neck was tied to the limb of a tree about ten feet above. The leader now learned of an intention to riddle his body with bullets when the drop occurred. Each member had pledged obedience to orders; each had been pledged to take no liquor for hours before, or during this expedition--pledges so far rigidly observed.

The leader addressed them: 'We are here to avenge outrage on a helpless child, and to let it be well known that such crime shall not go unpunished in this community. But mutilation of this fiend's remains will be a reflection upon ourselves and not a dispensation of justice.'

"The negro, seeing his end surely at hand, broke down, pleading for mercy; confessed that he had appreciated in advance the great peril in which his crime might place him, but had argued that, as a stranger, he would not be liable to identification, and that as the country was thickly wooded, he was sure of escape. 'But, fo' Gawd, gent'mun, ef a white man f'om de Norf hadn't put't in my hade dat a white 'oman warn' none too good fuh--'

"Word was given, and he dropped into eternity. It was broad daylight when the party got back to town. They overtook several negro men going to work who knew full well what they had been about. But there was no sign of protest or demur. The Commonwealth's Attorney made efforts to ascertain the perpetrators of the deed, but as the company entered the town and jail so quietly and left it with so little disturbance that only one person in the village had knowledge of their coming and going, no one was discovered who could name a single member of the party or who had any idea of whence they came or whither they went. So of course no indictment could be found." This was in 1870; since then till now no similar crime has occurred in that community. Within the circ.u.mscribed radius of its influence, lynching seems to eradicate the evil for which administered.

The moderation marking this execution has not always accompanied lynching.

Reading accounts of unnecessary tortures inflicted, of very orgies of vengeance, people remote from the scenes, Southerners no less than others, have shuddered with disgust, and trembled with concern for the dignity of their own race. Only people on the spot, writhing under the agony of provocation, comprehended the fury of response to the crime of crimes.

Vigilants meant to make their awful vengeance effective deterrent to the crime's repet.i.tion. No other crime offers such problems to relatives and officers of justice and to the people among whom it occurs; it is so outside of civilisation that there seem no terms for dispa.s.sionate discussion, no fine adjustment of civil trial and legal penalty.

Listen to this out of the depths of one Southern woman's experience: "I stood once with other friends, who were trying to nurse her back to life and reason, by the bedside of a girl--a beautiful, gentle, high-born creature--who had been outraged. We were using all the skill and tact and tenderness at our command. It seemed impossible for her to have one hour's peaceful sleep. She would start from slumber with a shriek, look at us with dilated eyes, then clutch us and beg for help. But the most unspeakable pity of it all was her loathing for her own body; her prayers that she might die and her body be burned to ashes. I heard her physician say to an officer who came to take her deposition: 'I would be signing that girl's death warrant if I let you in there to make her tell that horrible story over again.' When a grim group came with some negroes they wanted to bring before her for identification, her brothers and her lover said: 'Only over our dead bodies.'"

Lynching is inexcusable, even for this crime, which is comparable to no other, and to which murder is a trifle. So we may coolly argue when the blow has not fallen upon ourselves or at our own door. When it has, we think there's a wolf abroad and we have lambs. Those to whom the wrecked woman is dear are quiveringly alive to her irreparable wrong. The victim has rights, they argue; if, unhappily for herself, she survive the outrage, she is ent.i.tled to what poor remnants of reason may be left her; it is naturally their whole care to preserve her from memories that sear and craze, and from rehearsal before even the most private tribunal, of events that the merciful, even if not of her blood, must wish her to forget. Under such strain, men see as the one thing imperative the prompt and informal removal from existence of the offender, whom they look upon, not as man, but beast or fiend.

The "poor white" is the most frequent sufferer from a.s.sault; the wife of the small farmer attending household duties in her isolated home while her husband is in the fields or otherwise absent about his work; or the small farmer's daughter when she goes to the spring for water, or to the meadow for the cows, or trudges a lonely road or pathway to school; these are more convenient material than the lady of larger means and higher station, who is more rarely unattended. In cases on record the ravished and slain were children, five, six, eight years old; in others, mothers with babies at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and the babies were slain with the mothers. Here is a case cited by Judge M. L. Dawson: A negro raped and slew a farmer's five-year-old child. Arrested, tried, convicted, appealed, sentence reversed, reappealed (on insanity plea); people took him out and hung him.

In full-volumed indignation over lynching, the usual course of the Northern press was to almost lose sight of the crime provoking it. It was a minor fact that a woman was violated, that her skull was crushed or that she sustained other injuries from which she died or which made her a wreck for life--particulars too trivial to be noted by moulders of public opinion writing eloquent essays on "Crime in the South." Picking up a paper with this glaring headline, one would have a right to expect some outburst of indignation over the ravishment and butchering of womanhood.

But there would be editorial after editorial rife with invectives against lynching and lynchers, righteous with indignation over "lawlessness in the South," and not one word of sympathy or pity for the white victim of negro l.u.s.t! The fact that there was such a victim seemed lost sight of; the crime for which the negro was executed would often escape everything but bare mention, sometimes that. What deductions were negroes to draw from such distinctions, except that lynching was monstrous crime, rape an affair of little moment, and strenuous objection to it only one feature of d.a.m.nable "Race Prejudice in the South"?

"They do not care, the men and women of the North," I have heard a Southern girl exclaim, "if we are raped. They do not care that we are prisoners of fear, that we fear to take a ramble in the woods alone, fear to go about the farms on necessary duties, fear to sit in our houses alone; fear, if we live in cities, to go alone on the streets at hours when a woman is safe anywhere in Boston or New York."

From the Northern att.i.tude as reflected in the press and in the pulpit, negroes drew their own conclusions. Violation of a white woman was no harm; indeed, as a leveler of social distinctions, it might almost be construed into an act of grace. The way to become a hero in the eyes of the white North and to win the crown of martyrdom for oneself and new outbursts of sympathy for one's race was to a.s.sault a white woman of the South. This crime was a development of a period when the negro was dominated by political, religious and social advisers from the North and by the att.i.tude of the Northern press and pulpit. It was practically unknown in wartime, when negroes were left on plantations as protectors and guardians of white women and children.

"There was only one case,[26] as far as the writer can ascertain, of the negro's crime against womanhood during all the days of slavery," said Professor Stratton in the "North American Review" a few years ago, "while his fidelity and simple discharge of duty during the Civil War when the white men were away fighting against his liberty have challenged the admiration of the world; but since he has been made free, his increase in crime and immorality has gone side by side with his educational advancement--and even in greater ratio." The Professor gave figures, as others have done, which proved his case, if figures can prove anything.

Considered with reference to the crime under discussion, it is difficult to see how purely intellectual training tends to its increase, if there is any truth in the doctrine that brain development effects a reduction of animal propensities. Only in moral education, however, rests any real security for conduct. Negroes educated and negroes uneducated, in a technical sense, have committed this crime.[27]

The rapist is not to be taken as literal index to race character; he is an excrescence of the times; his crime is a horror that must be wiped out for the honour of the land, the security of womanhood, the credit of our negro citizenhood. The weapon for its destruction is in the hands of Afro-Americans; overwhelming sentiment on their part would put an end to it; they should be the last to stand for the rapist's protection; rather should they say to him: "You are none of us!" They should be quick to aid in his arrest, identification and deliverance to the law. Such att.i.tude would be more effective than any other one force that can be brought to bear upon this crime and that of lynching. I chronicle here as worthy of record, that in June, 1870, William Stimson, rapist, was tried before a negro jury, convicted on negro evidence, and hung November 4. This happened in North Carolina during negro rule.

The negro guilty of this hideous offense has committed against his race a worse crime than lynching can ever be. By the brutish few the many are judged--particularly when the many in vociferous condemnation of the penalty visited upon the criminal seem to condone his awful iniquity against themselves. Black men who have been and will be womanhood's protectors outnumber the beasts who wear like skins as many thousands to one; and it is not fair to themselves that they pursue any course, utter any sentiment, which causes them to be cla.s.sed in any way whatever with these. Black men are seeing this and are setting their faces towards stamping out the crime which causes lynching. Utterances from some of their pulpits and resolutions pa.s.sed by some of their religious bodies indicate this.

The occurrence of rapes, lynchings and burnings in the North and West has had beneficial influence upon the question at large. It has led white people of other sections to understand in some degree the Southern situation and to express condemnation of the crime that leads to lynching.

The att.i.tude of the Northern press has undergone great change in recent years, change effective for reform, in that while lynching is as severely under the ban as ever--which it should be--the companion crime goes with it. Southern sentiment is against lynching; I recall seven governors--Ayc.o.c.k of North Carolina, Montague of Virginia, Heyward of South Carolina, Candler and Terrell of Georgia, Jelks of Alabama, Vardaman of Mississippi--who have so placed themselves conspicuously on record. All our newspapers have done so, I believe, from the "Times-Dispatch" of Richmond, the Charlotte "Observer," the "Const.i.tution" and the "Journal"

of Atlanta, the "State" of Columbia, the Charleston "News-Courier," the Savannah "News," to the "Times-Democrat" of New Orleans, and "Times-Union"

of Jacksonville.

One hope and promise of the new const.i.tutions with which Southern States lately replaced the Black and Tan instruments is the eradication of this method of procedure. Soon after Virginia adopted hers, three negro rapists in that State received legal trial and conviction and not over hasty execution. On motion of District Attorney E. C. Goode, reprieve was granted after conviction that a case in Mecklenburg might be looked into more fully. Such deliberation has not been exceeded--if, indeed, it has been equaled--north of Mason & Dixon's line. But as long as rapes are committed, so long will there be danger of lynchings, not only in the South, but anywhere else. In the presence of this worse than savage crime the white race suffers reversion to savagery.

RACE PREJUDICE