CHAPTER IV—MR. LINCOLN’S DREAM

EVERY morning before the Preacher could finish his breakfast, callers were knocking at the door—the negro, the poor white, the widow, the orphan, the wounded, the hungry, an endless procession.

The spirit of the returned soldiers was all that he could ask. There was nowhere a slumbering spark of war. There was not the slightest effort to continue the lawless habits of four years of strife. Everywhere the spirit of patience, self-restraint and hope marked the life of the men who had made the most terrible soldiery. They were glad to be done with war, and have the opportunity to rebuild their broken fortunes. They were glad, too, that the everlasting question of a divided union was settled and settled forever. There was now to be one country and one flag, and deep down in their souls they were content with it.

The spectacle of this terrible army of the Confederacy, the memory of whose battle cry yet thrills the world, transformed in a month into patient and hopeful workmen, has never been paralleled in history.

Who destroyed this scene of peaceful rehabilitation? Hell has no pit dark enough, and no damnation deep enough for these conspirators when once history has fixed their guilt.

The task before the people of the South was one to tax the genius of the Anglo-Saxon race as never in its history, even had every friendly aid possible been extended by the victorious North. Four million negroes had suddenly been freed, and the foundations of economic order destroyed. Five billions of dollars worth of property were wiped out of existence, banks closed, every dollar of money worthless paper, the country plundered by victorious armies, its cities, mills and homes burned, and the flower of its manhood buried in nameless trenches, or worse still, flung upon the charity of poverty, maimed wrecks. The task of organising this wrecked society and marshalling into efficient citizenship this host of ignorant negroes, and yet to preserve the civilisation of the Anglo-Saxon race, the priceless heritage of two thousand years of struggle, was one to appal the wisdom of ages. Honestly and earnestly the white people of the South set about this work, and accepted the Thirteenth amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery without a protesting vote.

The President issued his proclamation announcing the method of restoring the union as it had been handed to him from the martyred Lincoln, and endorsed unanimously by Lincoln’s Cabinet. This plan was simple, broad and statesmanlike, and its spirit breathed Fraternity and union with malice toward none and charity toward all. It declared what Lincoln had always taught, that the union was indestructible, that the rebellious states had now only to repudiate Secession, abolish slavery, and resume their positions in the union, to preserve which so many lives had been sacrificed.

The people of North Carolina accepted this plan in good faith. They elected a Legislature composed of the noblest men of the state, and chose an old union man, Andrew Macon, Governor. Against Macon was pitted the man who was now the President and organiser of a federation of secret oath-bound societies, of which the union League, destined to play so tragic a part in the drama about to follow was the type. This man, Amos Hogg, was a writer of brilliant and forceful style. Before the war, a virulent Secessionist leader, he had justified and upheld slavery, and had written a volume of poems dedicated to John C. Calhoun. He had led the movement for Secession in the Convention which passed the ordinance. But when he saw his ship was sinking, he turned his back upon the “errors” of the past, professed the most loyal union sentiments, wormed himself into the confidence of the Federal Government, and actually succeeded in securing the position of Provisional Governor of the state! He loudly professed his loyalty, and with fury and malice demanded that Vance, the great war Governor, his predecessor, who, as a union man had opposed Secession, should now be hanged, and with him his own former associates in the Secession Convention, whom he had misled with his brilliant pen.

But the people had a long memory. They saw through this hollow pretense, grieved for their great leader, who was now locked in a prison cell in Washington, and voted for Andrew Macon.

In the bitterness of defeat, Amos Hogg sharpened his wits and his pen, and began his schemes of revengeful ambition.

The fires of passion burned now in the hearts of hosts of cowards, North and South, who had not met their foe in battle. Their day had come. The times were ripe for the Apostles of Revenge and their breed of statesmen.

The Preacher threw the full weight of his character and influence to defeat Hogg and he succeeded in carrying the county for Macon by an overwhelming majority. At the election only the men who had voted under the old regime were allowed to vote. The Preacher had not appeared on the hustings as a speaker, but as an organizer and leader of opinion he was easily the most powerful man in the county, and one of the most powerful in the state.