BOOK THREE—THE THE TRIAL BY FIRE CHAPTER I—A GROWL BENEATH THE EARTH

APPARENTLY McLeod’s triumph was complete and permanent. The farmers were disappointed in their wild hopes of a sub-treasury, and other socialistic schemes, but the passions of the campaign had been violent, and the offices they had won with their Negro ally had been soothing to their sense of pride.

A Republican farmer was Governor for a term of four years, they had elected two Senators, and three Supreme Court judges, and they had completely smashed the power of the Democratic party in the county governments. Everywhere they were triumphant in the local elections, filling almost every county office with heavy-handed sons of toil from the country districts, and making the town fops who had been drawing these fat salaries get out and work for a living.

Even McLeod was amazed at the thoroughness with which they cleaned the state of every vestige of the invincible Democracy that had ruled with a rod of iron since Legree’s flight.

Gaston could see but one weak spot in the alliance. The negroes had demanded their share of the spoils, and were gradually forcing their reluctant allies to grant them. He watched the progress of this movement with thrilling interest. The negroes had demanded the repeal of the county government plan of the Democracy, under which the credit of the forty black counties had been rescued from bankruptcy at the expense of local selfgovernment.

When the lawmakers who succeeded Legree had put this scheme of centralised power in force, these forty counties were immediately lifted from ruin to prosperity. But no negro ever held another office in them.

Now the negroes demanded the return to the principles of pure Democracy and the right to elect all town, township, and county officers direct. They got their demands. They took charge in short order of the great rich counties in the Black Belt, and white men ceased to hold the offices.

A negro college-graduate from Miss Walker’s classical institution had started a newspaper at Independence noted for its open demands for the recognition of the economic, social and political equality of the races. Young negro men and women walking the streets now refused to give half the sidewalk to a white man or woman when they met, and there were an increasing number of fights from such causes.

Gaston noted these signs with a growing sense of their import, and began his work for the second great campaign. The election for a legislature alone, he knew was lost already. His party had simply abandoned the fight. The Allied Party had passed new election laws, and under the tutelage of the doubtful methods of the past they had taken every partisan advantage possible within the limits of the Constitution. They could not be overthrown short of a political earthquake, and he knew it. But he thought he heard in the depths of the earth the low rumble of its coming, and he began to prepare for it.