The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan. Thomas Dixon

Cameron, your flattery is very sweet. Elsie and I do not remember our mother, and all this friendly criticism is more than welcome.”

      “Mamma, Captain Stoneman asks me to go with him and his sister to-night to see the President at the theatre. May I go?”

      “Will the President be there, Captain?” asked Mrs. Cameron.

      “Yes, Madam, with General and Mrs. Grant – it’s really a great public function in celebration of peace and victory. To-day the flag was raised over Fort Sumter, the anniversary of its surrender four years ago. The city will be illuminated.”

      “Then, of course, you can go. I will sit with Ben. I wish you to see the President.”

      At seven o’clock Phil called for Margaret. They walked to the Capitol hill and down Pennsylvania Avenue.

      The city was in a ferment. Vast crowds thronged the streets. In front of the hotel where General Grant stopped the throng was so dense the streets were completely blocked. Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, at every turn, in squads, in companies, in regimental crowds, shouting cries of victory.

      The display of lights was dazzling in its splendour. Every building in every street, in every nook and corner of the city, was lighted from attic to cellar. The public buildings and churches vied with each other in the magnificence of their decorations and splendour of illuminations.

      They turned a corner, and suddenly the Capitol on the throne of its imperial hill loomed a grand constellation in the heavens! Another look, and it seemed a huge bonfire against the background of the dark skies. Every window in its labyrinths of marble, from the massive base to its crowning statue of Freedom, gleamed and flashed with light – more than ten thousand jets poured their rays through its windows, besides the innumerable lights that circled the mighty dome within and without.

      Margaret stopped, and Phil felt her soft hand grip his arm with sudden emotion.

      “Isn’t it sublime!” she whispered.

      “Glorious!” he echoed.

      But he was thinking of the pressure of her hand on his arm and the subtle tones of her voice. Somehow he felt that the light came from her eyes. He forgot the Capitol and the surging crowds before the sweeter creative wonder silently growing in his soul.

      “And yet,” she faltered, “when I think of what all this means for our people at home – their sorrow and poverty and ruin – you know it makes me faint.”

      Phil’s hand timidly sought the soft one resting on his arm and touched it reverently.

      “Believe me, Miss Margaret, it will be all for the best in the end. The South will yet rise to a nobler life than she has ever lived in the past. This is her victory as well as ours.”

      “I wish I could think so,” she answered.

      They passed the City Hall and saw across its front, in giant letters of fire thirty feet deep, the words:

      “UNION, SHERMAN, AND GRANT”

      On Pennsylvania Avenue the hotels and stores had hung every window, awning, cornice, and swaying tree-top with lanterns. The grand avenue was bridged by tri-coloured balloons floating and shimmering ghostlike far up in the dark sky. Above these, in the blacker zone toward the stars, the heavens were flashing sheets of chameleon flames from bursting rockets.

      Margaret had never dreamed such a spectacle. She walked in awed silence, now and then suppressing a sob for the memory of those she had loved and lost. A moment of bitterness would cloud her heart, and then with the sense of Phil’s nearness, his generous nature, the beauty and goodness of his sister, and all they owed to her for Ben’s life, the cloud would pass.

      At every public building, and in front of every great hotel, bands were playing. The wild war strains, floating skyward, seemed part of the changing scheme of light. The odour of burnt powder and smouldering rockets filled the warm spring air.

      The deep bay of the great fort guns now began to echo from every hilltop commanding the city, while a thousand smaller guns barked and growled from every square and park and crossing.

      Jay Cooke & Co’s. banking-house had stretched across its front, in enormous blazing letters, the words:

      “THE BUSY B’S – BALLS, BALLOTS, AND BONDS”

      Every telegraph and newspaper office was a roaring whirlpool of excitement, for the same scenes were being enacted in every centre of the North. The whole city was now a fairy dream, its dirt and sin, shame and crime, all wrapped in glorious light.

      But above all other impressions was the contagion of the thunder shouts of hosts of men surging through the streets – the human roar with its animal and spiritual magnetism, wild, resistless, unlike any other force in the universe!

      Margaret’s hand again and again unconsciously tightened its hold on Phil’s arm, and he felt that the whole celebration had been gotten up for his benefit.

      They passed through a little park on their way to Ford’s Theatre on 10th Street, and the eye of the Southern girl was quick to note the budding flowers and full-blown lilacs.

      “See what an early spring!” she cried. “I know the flowers at home are gorgeous now.”

      “I shall hope to see you among them some day, when all the clouds have lifted,” he said.

      She smiled and replied with simple earnestness:

      “A warm welcome will await your coming.”

      And Phil resolved to lose no time in testing it.

      They turned into 10th Street, and in the middle of the block stood the plain three-story brick structure of Ford’s Theatre, an enormous crowd surging about its five doorways and spreading out on the sidewalk and half across the driveway.

      “Is that the theatre?” asked Margaret.

      “Yes.”

      “Why, it looks like a church without a steeple.”

      “Exactly what it really is, Miss Margaret. It was a Baptist church. They turned it into a playhouse, by remodelling its gallery into a dress-circle and balcony and adding another gallery above. My grandmother Stoneman is a devoted Baptist, and was an attendant at this church. My father never goes to church, but he used to go here occasionally to please her. Elsie and I frequently came.”

      Phil pushed his way rapidly through the crowd with a peculiar sense of pleasure in making a way for Margaret and in defending her from the jostling throng.

      They found Elsie at the door, stamping her foot with impatience.

      “Well, I must say, Phil, this is prompt for a soldier who had positive orders,” she cried. “I’ve been here an hour.”

      “Nonsense, Sis, I’m ahead of time,” he protested.

      Elsie held up her watch.

      “It’s a quarter past eight. Every seat is filled, and they’ve stopped selling standing-room. I hope you have good seats.”

      “The best in the house to-night, the first row in the balcony dress-circle, opposite the President’s box. We can see everything on the stage, in the box, and every nook and corner of the house.”

      “Then I’ll forgive you for keeping me waiting.”

      They ascended the stairs, pushed through the throng standing, and at last reached the seats.

      What a crowd! The building was a mass of throbbing humanity, and, over all, the hum of the thrilling wonder of peace and victory!

      The women in magnificent costumes, officers in uniforms flashing with gold, the show of wealth and power, the perfume of flowers and the music of violin and flutes gave Margaret the impression of a dream, so sharp was the contrast with her own life and people in the South.

      The interior of the house was a billow of red, white, and blue. The President’s box was wrapped in two enormous silk flags with gold-fringed edges gracefully draped and hanging in festoons.

      Withers, the leader of the orchestra, was in high feather. He raised