The Clansman
BOOK IV
THE KU KLUX KLAN
CHAPTER VI
THE COUNTER STROKE
FROM the hour he had watched the capture of the armory old Stoneman
felt in the air a current against him which was electric, as if the
dead had heard the cry of the clansmen's greeting, risen and rallied to
their pale ranks.
The daring campaign these men were waging took his breath. They were
going not only to defeat his delegation to Congress, but send their own
to take their seats, reinforced by the enormous power of a suppressed
Negro vote. The blow was so sublime in its audacity, he laughed in
secret admiration while he raved and cursed.
The army corps took possession of the hill counties, quartering from
five to six hundred regulars at each courthouse; but the mischief was
done. The state was on fire. The eighty thousand rifles with which the
negroes had been armed were now in the hands of their foes. A white
rifle-club was organised in every town, village, and hamlet. They
attended the public meetings with their guns, drilled in front of the
speakers' stands, yelled, hooted, hissed, cursed, and jeered at the
orators who dared to champion or apologise for Negro rule. At night the
hoof-beat of squadrons of pale horsemen and the crack of their
revolvers struck terror to the heart of every negro, carpet-bagger, and
scalawag.
There was a momentary lull in the excitement, which Stoneman mistook
for fear, at the appearance of the troops. He had the Governor appoint
a white sheriff, a young scalawag from the mountains who was a noted
moonshiner and desperado. He arrested over a hundred leading men in the
county, charged them with complicity in the killing of the three
members of the African Guard, and instructed the judge and clerk of the
court to refuse bail and commit them to jail under military guard.
To his amazement, the prisoners came into Piedmont armed and
mounted. They paid no attention to the deputy sheriffs who were
supposed to have them in charge. They deliberately formed in line under
Ben Cameron's direction and he led them in a parade through the
streets.
The five hundred United States regulars who were camped on the river
bank were Westerners. Ben led his squadron of armed prisoners in front
of this camp and took them through the evolutions of cavalry with the
precision of veterans. The soldiers dropped their games and gathered,
laughing, to watch them. The drill ended with a double-rank charge at
the river embankment. When they drew every horse on his haunches on the
brink, firing a volley with a single crash, a wild cheer broke from the
soldiers, and the officers rushed from their tents.
Ben wheeled his men, galloped in front of the camp, drew them up at
dress parade, and saluted. A low word of command from a trooper, and
the Westerners quickly formed in ranks, returned the salute, and
cheered. The officers rushed up, cursing, and drove the men back to
their tents.
The horsemen laughed, fired a volley in the air, cheered, and
galloped back to the court-house. The court was glad to get rid of
them. There was no question raised over technicalities in making out
bail-bonds. The clerk wrote the names of imaginary bondsmen as fast as
his pen could fly, while the perspiration stood in beads on his red
forehead.
Another telegram from old Stoneman to the White House, and the Writ
of Habeas Corpus was suspended and Martial Law proclaimed.
Enraged beyond measure at the salute from the troops, he had two
companies of negro regulars sent from Columbia, and they camped in the
Court-House Square.
He determined to make a desperate effort to crush the fierce spirit
before which his forces were being driven like chaff. He induced Bizzel
to return from Cleveland with his negro wife and children. He was
escorted to the City Hall and reinstalled as Mayor by the full force of
seven hundred troops, and a negro guard placed around his house.
Stoneman had Lynch run an excursion from the Black Belt, and brought a
thousand negroes to attend a final rally at Piedmont. He placarded the
town with posters on which were printed the Civil Rights Bill and the
proclamation of the President declaring Martial Law.
Ben watched this day dawn with nervous dread. He had passed a
sleepless night, riding in person to every Den of the Klan and issuing
positive orders that no white man should come to Piedmont.
A clash with the authority of the United States he had avoided from
the first as a matter of principle. It was essential to his success
that his men should commit no act of desperation which would imperil
his plans. Above all, he wished to avoid a clash with old Stoneman
personally.
The arrival of the big excursion was the signal for a revival of
negro insolence which had been planned. The men brought from the
Eastern part of the state were selected for the purpose. They marched
over the town yelling and singing. A crowd of them, half drunk, formed
themselves three abreast and rushed the sidewalks, pushing every white
man, woman, and child into the street.
They met Phil on his way to the hotel and pushed him into the
gutter. He said nothing, crossed the street, bought a revolver, loaded
it and put it in his pocket. He was not popular with the negroes, and
he had been shot at twice on his way from the mills at night. The whole
affair of this rally, over which his father meant to preside, filled
him with disgust, and he was in an ugly mood.
Lynch's speech was bold, bitter, and incendiary, and at its close
the drunken negro troopers from the local garrison began to slouch
through the streets, two and two, looking for trouble.
At the close of the speaking, Stoneman called the officer in command
of these troops, and said:
“Major, I wish this rally to-day to be a proclamation of the
supremacy of law, and the enforcement of the equality of every man
under law. Your troops are entitled to the rights of white men. I
understand the hotel table has been free to-day to the soldiers from
the camp on the river. They are returning the courtesy extended to the
criminals who drilled before them. Send two of your black troops down
for dinner and see that it is served. I wish an example for the state.”
“It will be a dangerous performance, sir,” the major protested.
The old Commoner furrowed his brow.
“Have you been instructed to act under my orders?”
“I have, sir,” said the officer, saluting.
“Then do as I tell you,” snapped Stoneman.
Ben Cameron had kept indoors all day, and dined with fifty of the
Western troopers whom he had identified as leading in the friendly
demonstration to his men. Margaret, who had been busy with Mrs. Cameron
entertaining these soldiers, was seated in the dining-room alone eating
her dinner, while Phil waited impatiently in the parlour.
The guests had all gone when two big negro troopers, fighting drunk,
walked into the hotel. They went to the water-cooler and drank
ostentatiously, thrusting their thick lips coated with filth far into
the cocoanut dipper, while a dirty hand grasped its surface.
They pushed the dining-room door open and suddenly flopped down
beside Margaret.
She attempted to rise, and cried in rage: “How dare you, black
brutes?”
One of them threw his arm around her chair, thrust his face into
hers, and said with a laugh:
“Don't hurry, my beauty; stay and take dinner wid us!”
Margaret again attempted to rise, and screamed, as Phil rushed into
the room with drawn revolver. One of the negroes fired at him, missed,
and the next moment dropped dead with a bullet through his heart.
The other leaped across the table and through the open window.
Margaret turned, confronting both Phil and Ben with revolvers in
their hands, and fainted.
Ben hurried Phil out the back door and persuaded him to fly.
“Man, you must go! We must not have a riot here today. There's no
telling what will happen. A disturbance now, and my men will swarm into
town to-night. For God's sake go, until things are quiet!”
“But I tell you I'll face it. I'm not afraid,” said Phil quietly.
“No, but I am,” urged Ben. “These two hundred negroes are armed and
drunk. Their officers may not be able to control them, and they may lay
their hands on you-go-go!-go!-you must go! The train is due in fifteen
minutes.”
He half lifted him on a horse tied behind the hotel, leaped on
another, galloped to the flag-station two miles out of town, and put
him on the north-bound train.
“Stay in Charlotte until I wire for you,” was Ben's parting
injunction.
He turned his horse's head for McAllister's, sent the two boys with
all speed to the Cyclops of each of the ten township Dens with positive
orders to disregard all wild rumours from Piedmont and keep every man
out of town for two days.
As he rode back he met a squad of mounted white regulars, who
arrested him. The trooper's companion had sworn positively that he was
the man who killed the negro.
Within thirty minutes he was tried by drum-head court martial and
sentenced to be shot.