The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South. Thomas Dixon

I tell you – she's loyal – I'd trust her with my life, or yours, or the baby's, without hesitation. She proved her loyalty to me and to you last night."

      "Yes, and that's just why she's so dangerous." He spoke slowly, as if talking to himself. "You can't understand, dear, I am entering now the last phase of a desperate struggle with the little Scalawag who sits in the Governor's chair for the mastery of this state and its life. The next two weeks and this election will decide whether white civilization shall live or a permanent negroid mongrel government, after the pattern of Haiti and San Domingo, shall be established. If we submit, we are not worth saving. We ought to die and our civilization with us! We are not going to submit, we are not going to die, we are going to win. I want you to help me now by getting rid of this girl."

      "I won't give her up. There's no sense in it. A man who fought four years in the war is not afraid of a laughing girl who loves his baby and his wife! I can't risk a green, incompetent girl in the nursery now. I can't think of breaking in a new one. I like Cleo. She's a breath of fresh air when she comes into my room; she's clean and neat; she sings beautifully; her voice is soft and low and deep; I love her touch when she dresses me; the baby worships her – is all this nothing to you?"

      "Is my work nothing to you?" he answered soberly.

      "Bah! It's a joke! Your work has nothing to do with this girl. She knows nothing, cares nothing for politics – it's absurd!"

      "My dear, you must listen to me now – "

      "I won't listen. I'll have my way about my servants. It's none of your business. Look after your politics and let the nursery alone!"

      "Please be reasonable, my love. I assure you I'm in dead earnest. The danger is a real one, or I wouldn't ask this of you – please – "

      "No – no – no – no!" she fairly shrieked.

      His voice was very quiet when he spoke at last:

      "I'm sorry to cross you in this, but the girl must leave to-night."

      The tones of his voice and the firm snap of his strong jaw left further argument out of the question and the little woman played her trump card.

      She sprang to her feet, pale with rage, and gave way to a fit of hysteria. He attempted to soothe her, in grave alarm over the possible effects on her health of such a temper.

      With a piercing scream she threw herself across the bed and he bent over her tenderly:

      "Please, don't act this way!"

      Her only answer was another scream, her little fists opening and closing like a bird's talons gripping the white counterpane in her trembling fingers.

      The man stood in helpless misery and sickening fear, bent low and whispered:

      "Please, please, darling – it's all right – she can stay. I won't say another word. Don't make yourself ill. Please don't!"

      The sobbing ceased for a moment, and he added:

      "I'll go into the nursery and send her here to put you to bed."

      He turned to the door and met Cleo entering.

      "Miss Jean called me?" she asked with a curious smile playing about her greenish eyes.

      "Yes. She wishes you to put her to bed."

      The girl threw him a look of triumphant tenderness and he knew that she had heard and understood.

      CHAPTER VIII

      A NEW WEAPON

      From the moment the jail doors opened the Governor felt the chill of defeat. With his armed guard of fifty thousand "Loyal" white men he hoped to stem the rising tide of Anglo-Saxon fury. But the hope was faint. There was no assurance in its warmth. Every leader he had arrested without warrant and held without bail was now a firebrand in a powder magazine. Mass meetings, barbecues and parades were scheduled for every day by his enemies in every county.

      The state was ablaze with wrath from the mountains to the sea. The orators of the white race spoke with tongues of flame.

      The record of negro misrule under an African Legislature was told with brutal detail and maddening effects. The state treasury was empty, the school funds had been squandered, millions in bonds had been voted and stolen and the thieves had fled the state in terror.

      All this the Governor knew from the first, but he also knew that an ignorant negro majority would ask no questions and believe no evil of their allies.

      The adventurers from the North had done their work of alienating the races with a thoroughness that was nothing short of a miracle. The one man on earth who had always been his best friend, every negro now held his bitterest foe. He would consult his old master about any subject under the sun and take his advice against the world except in politics. He would come to the back door, beg him for a suit of clothes, take it with joyous thanks, put it on and march straight to the polls and vote against the hand that gave it.

      He asked no questions as to his own ticket. It was all right if it was against the white man of the South. The few Scalawags who trained with negroes to get office didn't count.

      The negro had always despised such trash. The Governor knew his solid black constituency would vote like sheep, exactly as they were told by their new teachers.

      But the nightmare that disturbed him now, waking or dreaming, was the fear that this full negro vote could not be polled. The daring speeches by the enraged leaders of the white race were inflaming the minds of the people beyond the bounds of all reason. These leaders had sworn to carry the election and dared the Governor to show one of his scurvy guards near a polling place on the day they should cast their ballots.

      The Ku Klux Klan openly defied all authority. Their men paraded the county roads nightly and ended their parades by lining their horsemen in cavalry formation, galloping through the towns and striking terror to every denizen of the crowded negro quarters.

      In vain the Governor issued frantic appeals for the preservation of the sanctity of the ballot. His speeches in which he made this appeal were openly hissed.

      The ballot was no longer a sacred thing. The time was in American history when it was the badge of citizen kingship. At this moment the best men in the state were disfranchised and hundreds of thousands of negroes, with the instincts of the savage and the intelligence of the child, had been given the ballot. Never in the history of civilization had the ballot fallen so low in any republic. The very atmosphere of a polling place was a stench in the nostrils of decent men.

      The determination of the leaders of the Klan to clear the polls by force if need be was openly proclaimed before the day of election. The philosophy by which they justified this stand was simple, and unanswerable, for it was founded in the eternal verities. Men are not made free by writing a constitution on a piece of paper. Freedom is inside. A ballot is only a symbol. That symbol stands for physical force directed by the highest intelligence. The ballot, therefore, is force – physical force. Back of every ballot is a bayonet and the red blood of the man who holds it. Therefore, a minority submits to the verdict of a majority at the polls. If there is not an intelligent, powerful fighting unit back of the scrap of paper that falls into a box, there's nothing there and that man's ballot has no more meaning than if it had been deposited by a trained pig or a dog.

      On the day of this fated election the little Scalawag Governor sat in the Capitol, the picture of nervous despair. Since sunrise his office had been flooded with messages from every quarter of the state begging too late for troops. Everywhere his henchmen were in a panic. From every quarter the stories were the same.

      Hundreds of determined, silent white men had crowded the polls, taken their own time to vote and refused to give an inch of room to the long line of panic-stricken negroes who looked on helplessly. At five o'clock in the afternoon less than a hundred blacks had voted in the entire township in which the Capital was located.

      Norton was a candidate for the Legislature on the white ticket, and the Governor had bent every effort to bring about his defeat. The candidate against him was a young negro who had been a slave of his father, and now called himself Andy Norton. Andy had been a house-servant, was exactly the major's age and they had been playmates