D. Worthington

“ Corruption and ignorance were the only passports to power. No modern instance of wrong and oppression can approach this Fructidor of the sixties in the South. Human ghouls not so black as these vomited out, the Carbonari of Italy, the Free Companions of France and the Moss Troopers of England.
This condition of things, we dare assert, is without a parallel in the history of any people, in any civilization. Even when Rome was swayed by the keenest lust for conquest and dominion, their legions conquered the barbaric states, not to degrade or destroy, but to attach them to her invincible arms. ”

“ She went on her way in silence but her outraged spirit could hardly contain itself, and this she said to herself with burning anger is reconstruction! A civilization that with whipcords and chains has suspended law and love and benevolence.
When Alice reached the little home of the widow she knew that the death angel had entered before her and was putting his icy finger upon the eye and the heart, and with an almost inaudible exclamation of "poor Allie" she passed away. ”

“ The Civil war gendered this brood that filled the South with horror, and their disorders and tumults precipitated a crisis that plunged the Southland into a paroxysm from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. There was no refuge from an evil that was all-pervasive. The great war with its pageants and sacrifices, its banners and generals, its storming soldiery and reservoirs of human blood was almost thrust out of the memory as the patriots of the sixties stood face to face to the all-encompassing perils of reconstruction. ”

“ The characteristics of these people are ineffaceably impressed upon our civilization. Indeed they are as deeply grounded into the religious and social soil of North Carolina, as though they had taken root like the rhododendron under the rocks and in the fissures of our hills and mountains. The Scotch-Irish American, with gigantic strides, has at last sat himself down upon the loftiest pinnacle of our 19th century civilization. He has never yielded to oppression; he has never compounded with evil. ”

“ She felt that in the world's tragedy of sin it was indeed a savor of life unto life; that it erects in the human soul, where there is sin, sorrow and despair, a sanitarium; rendering good for evil, giving back pardon for injury; preferring pity to vengeance; kneeling always upon the heights of virtue to uplift the broken-hearted. Whether its blessed truths be spoken in prophecy or narrative; whether whispered from the sepulchre or the crypt; whether thundered from Sinai or Mars Hill; they tenderly lead poor, fallen human nature into the portals of immortality, into the very gate of Heaven. ”

“ As the sun was going down the old Colonel looked across the field and saw Joshua and Hannah with great bundles upon their heads coming toward the mansion—coming back to the old home; coming back to be just as humble, just as faithful, just as watchful as in the happy old days; coming back to run errands if need be, with joints stiffened by hardships and old age, but with hearts so light and trustful ”

“ In a catastrophe, such as this, let that band of patriots to which it is my pride to belong, share in the spirit of the last of the Romans; that spirit which scorns to bow before any earthly power, save that of their beleaguered country.
The reconstruction government has purposely demoralized the economic conditions which contributed to the prosperity of the South. Full well it knew that the wealth of the people depended upon their labor. There was a time when plunder was the great resource of the nations of the earth. ”

“ It is proper just here to remark that Clarissa had never been a correspondent or pupil of Lord Chesterfield. She had been emancipated from the slavvish drudgery of the corn-field, promoted as it were from the cabin to the mansion. Her manners were direct, pungent, self-assertive, and her gibberish and volubility were immensely amusing to the high official who was now adapting himself to conditions and experiences as they prevailed in the southland; and from time to time interrogating the negro as he or she appeared without the superficialities of reconstruction. ”

“ A prayer spoken out of a heart touched by pity or sorrow, and instantly another heart would be uplifted in thanksgiving. She exercised too a power over the freed slaves that made captive to her will almost all the stubborn and rebellious negroes. Old Ned would have plucked out his eyes for her and cast them at her feet; so would Clarissa, so would Clarabel; so would old Caesar and Hannah and Joshua. ”

“ I am looking backward, as it were, through a smoked glass, for a great sunburst is within the radius of vision, a sunburst that cheered our tired eyes with its thousand scintillant gleams in the hot days of August A. D. Nineteen Hundred.
Looking backward upon a picturesque civilization—upon the old homesteads and plantations of the South, with their hallowed associations and ideals—with their impedimenta not of human chattels, but of compact masses of freed slaves, the underpinning of that civilization in its concrete form. ”

“ The judge was a young man, seemingly of great intellectual reserve, possessing a steel gray eye that shot its glances through the subject as if it were but marking a point through which his judgment of a man would enter. There were courage, self poise, wisdom, integrity apparent in the man who had arrived to administer the law. For the first time this judicial officer saw before him an indistinguishable mass of the freedmen of the south. ”

“ Passing away from the frigid griefs that are soon to environ old Ingleside, when the blood in its channels is to pause in its circulation, when a negro, vile and savage lacerates the dear, dear face of her beautiful daughter, and her precious blood follows the thorns. Passing away before the proud head of her noble husband is bowed in ignominy, when the shackles of a felon encircle arms—enslave hands that never struck a blow, except for his bleeding country. ”

“ The products of human labor, its food and clothing, like the fruits of the earth are annual, and God in his wisdom has adjusted human wants to their power of production. Like the bread from heaven the dews of every night produce the crops, and the labors of every day gather the harvest. What, but an almost boundless power of consumption and reproduction has given to the South its athletic vigor, and yet the enfranchisement of the negroes has been a fatal blow to every industrial interest. ”

“ Let me give you a single illustration that occurs to me just this moment, if you will pardon me, and let me say that I am convinced that it was patriotism that kept the Confederate soldiers in the army, where they preferred the thick of the battle, and sought death itself as the highest reward of the brave. It would illustrate our pride as a nation to put the gallant soldiers of the South in an attitude of glory equal to our own. ”

“ The infernal spoils system in the South, if not checkmated, will destroy the country. This same spoils principle has been the cause of more wretchedness and guilt, individual and national, than any other in the history of human suffering. It is the incentive alike to the burglar who breaks and enters your house at night and the highwayman who waylays your path and takes your life; that, rising from individuals to multitudes, it is the impelling motive to all the plunderings and desolations of military conquests ”

“ Joshua, in his frantic efforts to escape, ran his head against a heated stove and red hot coals of fire were scattered over rug, carpet and floor. As the last society lady somersaulted out of the window, great tongues of fire were lapping up frieze and cornice, and facade, and the cresent and star disappeared in a ghastly cincture of fire.
As Jake the Kuklux was passing near the cabin of Joshua the next morning, on his way to the dark recesses of the swamp, he heard groans and incoherent exclamations that caused him to knock at the door and ask what was the matter. ”

“ The South, like a beautiful captive, was turned over to be deflowered and defiled. She could only cry in her desperation—"I am within your brutal power, and gagged and pinioned must submit."
"Our elective judiciary has contributed immeasurably to the vicious, demoralizing spirit of the age." The intelligent and upright judge is the representative of the law in its simplicity, sufficiency and learning. He is the living exponent of its justice. ”

“ Here is the old rookery out of which are ricochetting birds almost of every voice and plume. Here are cattle, red and dappled, cropping the meadow grass. Here are vast expanses clad in the refreshing drapery of nature, upheaving their grassy billows. Here are the crumbling cabins of the old slaves, in silent platoons that flank the old mansion, the earmarks of a picturesque civilization abused and denounced. ”

“ These atrocious policies were conceptions of men who swore in their wrath that not a blade of grass should spring where their hellish coursers planted hoof; that in the realigning of the federal union, strong black lines should be drawn with a savage vengeance over the face of the South. Reconstruction was the act of self-destruction, and the suicides deserve to be buried without the shedding of a tear, without christian sepulture in outlawed graves. ”

“ Here the ambassadors of Christ were persuasive with tongue, fervent in spirit; they felt that their religion was more ancient than government, higher than any influence; more sacred than any trust; a religion that was benevolence in its gentlest mood, courage in its boldest daring, affection in its intensest power; philanthropy in its widest reach; patriotism in its most impassioned vigor; reason in its broadest display; the mighty heart that throbbed through every artery; fed every muscle; sped the hidden springs of an electric current through every nerve. ”

“ As Judge Bonham looked at the man, he felt that the entreaty of the South had been answered by the Power that rules in heaven and earth.
"God give us men; a time like this demands
Great minds, strong hearts, true faith and willing hands;
Men whom the lust of office cannot buy,
Men who have honor and will not lie."
These gentlemen had scarcely begun to sap the foundations of the superstructure of reconstruction, when dinner was announced by the beautiful hostess, who stood in the door, as judge Bonham declared, encircled in a cincture of angelic grace. ”

“ The old negro discovered in the experience of the few eventful years that there was nothing hopeful or helpful in the pledges or proclamations of the reconstructionists. The very old negroes were not counted in the aggregation of their numerical power, or in the sum total of the freedmen. "Old Glory" never welcomed them with a dip of its proud crest as they passed in and out of the town in tatters and rags. It never bade them with its caress to pause within its grateful shadow in the dog days when they were over wearied with marching and counter-marching. ”

“ If Arthur could speak to me now, and could know that ere long I shall be bereft of the last of my kindred, I am sure he would say to me with a smile, "Sweet Alice, your loving heart has been my own all these sad years, but we cannot marry here, though we may be sweethearts. You require a manly heart in which you may place your burdens, and a manly bosom upon which you may recline your tired, wearied head; strong arms that shall shield you from every peril. Think of me at the nuptial hour and know that I shall give you away at the altar with my blessing and smile." ”

“ Indeed, Ned had never felt the rigors or oppression of slavery in this household or upon this plantation. Old master's government was patriarchal, and emancipation had come so inopportunely; somehow it never appealed to the affections, or the love of the old negroes, but it came upon them as other great crises have come—with arguments and reinforcements that shattered every principle of manhood and bestialized their natures. ”

“ But she was passing away—passing away like the shadowy vapor that clings for a moment to the mountain's crest, like the resplendent star that shimmers more beautifully as it is dipping its disc below the western verge, and bids us good night—like the breath of the crushed flower that exhales its aroma for a moment, and is gone. Passing away from a home that is darkened by shadows, passing away from the hearts that are consumed into dead white ashes. ”

“ In the evolution of the negro from a savage to a slave, from a slave to a freedman, and from a freedman to a citizen, only in exceptional instances has he been able to originate a theory or experiment that has been profitable to himself or others. No high state of civilization has ever originated from them. History teaches us that a nation may pass through an ascending or descending career. ”

“ Alice exclaimed, "we must go away from here. We will be murdered if we do not get away from these horrid negroes, I shall die with fright if I remain here any longer. They can come at any hour of the day or night and kill us. Father is old and feeble and cannot protect me, and you know, Clarissa, I cannot protect him. ”

“ Fanatics! you have emancipated by fraud and violence the slaves you affect to pity; you have doomed them to beggary, outlawry, prostitution and crime! You have filled them with discontent and made them to feel a chain they never felt before, and turned against them the care and consideration of their own masters, while your red squadrons of fanaticism are careering wildly through our plantations, so lately scourged by the hurricane of war; you the minions of a power confessedly omnipotent. ”