Nevertheless he made a brave effort. The ruggedness of the disowned family of Smiths and the chicanery inherited from the gnarly-headed and subtle-minded old judge came to his rescue, and he determined not to fail without a fight. He shingled himself with deeds of trust and sales under fraudulent judgments or friendly liens, to delay if they did not avert calamity. Then he set himself at work to effect sales. He soon swallowed his wrath and appealed to the North--the enemy to whom he owed all his calamities, as he thought.
He sent flaming circulars to bleak New England health-exhibits to the smitten of consumption, painting the advantages of climate, soil, and society--did all in his power to induce immigrants to come and buy, in order that he might beat off poverty and failure and open disgrace. He made a brave fight, but it had never occurred to him to sell an acre to a colored man when he was accosted by Nimbus, who, still wearing some part of his uniform, came, over to negotiate with him for the purchase of Red Wing.
All these untoward events had not made the master of Knapp-of-Reeds peculiarly amiable, or kindly disposed toward any whom he deemed in the remotest manner responsible for his loss. For two cla.s.ses he could not find words sufficient to express his loathing--namely, Yankees and Secessionists. To the former directly and to the latter indirectly he attributed all his ills. The colored man he hated as a man, as bitterly as he had before highly prized him as a slave.
At the outset of the war he had been openly blamed for his coolness toward the cause of the Confederacy. Then, for a time, he had acquiesced in what was done--had "gone with his State," as it was then expressed--and still later, when convinced of the hopelessness of the struggle, he had advocated peace measures; to save his property at all hazards, some said; because he was at heart a Unionist, others declared So, he had come to regard himself as well disposed toward the Union, and even had convinced himself that he had suffered persecution for righteousness" sake, when, in truth, his "Unionism" was only an investment made to avoid loss.
These things, however, tended to embitter him all the more against all those persons and events in any manner connected with his misfortunes. It was in such a mood and under such circ.u.mstances, that word was brought to Mr. Desmit in his private library, that "a n.i.g.g.e.r" wanted to see him. The servant did not know his name, what he wanted, or where he came from. She could only say that he had ridden there on a "right peart mule" and was a "right smart-looking boy." She was ordered to bring him in, and Nimbus stood before his master for the first time since he had been sent down the country to work on fortifications intended to prevent the realization of his race"s long-delayed vision of freedom. He came with his hat in his hand, saying respectfully,
"How d"ye, Ma.r.s.e Desmit?"
"Is that you, Nimbus? Get right out of here! I don"t want any such grand rascal n.i.g.g.e.r in my house."
"But, Ma.r.s.e Desrnit," began the colored man, greatly flurried by this rude greeting.
"I don"t want any "buts." d.a.m.n you, I"ve had enough of all such cattle. What are you here for, anyhow? Why don"t you go back to the Yankees that you ran away to? I suppose you want I should feed you, clothe you, support you, as I"ve been doing for your lazy wife and children ever since the surrender. I shan"t do it a day longer--not a day! D"ye hear? Get off from my land before the sun goes down to-morrow or I"ll have the overseer set his dogs on you."
"All right," said Nimbus coolly; "jes yer pay my wife what"s due her and we"ll leave ez soon ez yer please."
"Due her? You d.a.m.ned black rascal, do you stand there and tell me I owe her anything?"
Strangely enough, the colored man did not quail. His army life had taught him to stand his ground, even against a white man, and he had not yet learned how necessary it was to unlearn the lesson of liberty and a.s.sume again the role of the slave. The white man was astounded. Here was a "sa.s.sy n.i.g.g.e.r" indeed! This was what freedom did for them!
"Her papers dat you gib her at de hirin", Ma.r.s.e Potem," said Nimbus, "says dat yer shall pay her fo" dollars a month an" rations. She"s hed de rations all reg"lar, Ma.r.s.e Desrnit; dat"s all right, but not a dollar ob de money."
"You lie, you black rascal!" said Desmit excitedly; "she"s drawn every cent of it!"
"Wal," said Nimbus, "ef dat"s what yer say, we"ll hev ter let de "Bureau" settle it."
"What, sir? You rascal, do you threaten me with the "Bureau"?"
shouted Desmit, starting toward him in a rage, and aiming a blow at him with the heavy walking-stick he carried.
"Don"t do dat, Ma.r.s.e Desmit," cried the colored man; "don"t do dat!"
There was a dangerous gleam in his eye, but the white man did not heed the warning. His blow fell not on the colored man"s head, but on his upraised arm, and the next moment the cane was wrested from his hands, and the recent slave stood over his former master as he lay upon the floor, where he had fallen or been thrown, and said:
"Don"t yer try dat, Ma.r.s.e Desmit; I won"t bar it--dat I won"t, from no man, black ner white. I"se been a sojer sence I was a slave, an"
ther don"t no man hit me a lick jes cos I"m black enny mo". Yer"s an" ole man, Ma.r.s.e Desmit, an" yer wuz a good "nough marster ter me in the ole times, but yer mustn"t try ter beat a free man. I don"t want ter hurt yer, but yer mustn"t do dat!"
"Then get out of here instantly," said Desmit, rising and pointing toward the door.
"All right, Ma.r.s.e," said Nimbus, stooping for his hat; ""tain"t no use fer ye to be so mad, though. I jes come fer to make a trade wid ye."
"Get out of here, you d.a.m.ned, treacherous, ungrateful, black rascal.
I wish every one of your whole race had the small-pox! Get out!"
As Nimbus turned to go, he continued:
"And get your d.a.m.ned lazy tribe off from my plantation before to-morrow night, if you don"t want the dogs put on them, too!"
"I ain"t afeard o" yer dogs," said Nimbus, as he went down the hall, and, mounting his mule, rode away.
With every step his wrath increased. It was well for Potestatem Desmit that he was not present to feel the anger of the black giant whom he had enraged. Once or twice he turned back, gesticulating fiercely and trembling with rage. Then he seemed to think better of it, and, turning his mule into the town a mile off his road, he lodged a complaint against his old master, with the officer of the "Bureau," and then rode quietly home, satisfied to "let de law take its course," as he said. He was glad that there was a law for him--a law that put him on the level with his old master--and meditated gratefully, as he rode home, on what the nation had wrought in his behalf since the time when "Ma.r.s.e Desmit" had sent him along that very road with an order to "Ma.r.s.e Ware" to give him "twenty lashes well laid on." The silly fellow thought that thenceforth he was going to have a "white man"s chance in life."
He did not know that in our free American Government, while the Federal power can lawfully and properly ordain and establish the theoretical rights of its citizens, it has no legal power to support and maintain those rights against the encroachment of any of the States, since in those matters the State is sovereign, and the part is greater than the whole.
CHAPTER XIV.
BORN OF THE STORM.
Perhaps there was never any more galling and hated badge of defeat imposed upon a conquered people than the "Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands," a branch of the Federal executive power which grew out of the necessities of the struggle to put down rebellion, and to which, little by little, came to be referred very many of those matters which could by no means be neglected, but which did not properly fall within the purview of any other branch of military administration. It is known, in these latter days, simply as the Freedmen"s Bureau, and thought to have been a terrible engine of oppression and terror and infamy, because of the denunciations which the former slave-owners heaped upon it, and the usually accepted idea that the mismanaged and malodorous Freedmen"s Savings Bank was, somehow or other, an outgrowth and exponent of this inst.i.tution. The poor thing is dead now, and, like dead humanity, the good it did has been interred with its bones.
It has been buried, with curses deep and bitter for its funeral obsequies. Its officers have been loaded with infamy. Even its wonderful results have been hidden from the sight of man, and its history blackened with shame and hate. It is one of the curious indices of public feeling that the North listened, at first, with good-natured indifference to the virulent diatribes of the recently conquered people in regard to this inst.i.tution; after a time wonder succeeded to indifference; until finally, while it was still an active branch of the public service, wondering credulity succeeded, and its name became synonymous with disgrace; so that now there is hardly a corner of the land in which a man can be found brave enough to confess that he wore the uniform and performed the duties of an agent of the "Freedmen"s Bureau." The thorough subserviency of Northern sentiment to the domination of that masterly will which characterized "the South" of the old regime was never better ill.u.s.trated. "Curse me this people!" said the Southern Balak--of the Abolitionist first, of the Bureau-Officer next, and then of the Carpet-Bagger. The Northern Balaam hemmed and paltered, and then--_cursed the children of his loins_!
Of the freedmen, our recent allies in war, the grateful and devoted friends, of the nation which had opened for them the gateway of the future, not one of the whole four millions had a word to utter in reproach of this branch of the service, in which they were particularly interested. Strangely enough, too, none of those Union men of the South, who had been refugees during the war or friends of that Union after its close, joined in the complaints and denunciations which were visited on this inst.i.tution and its agents. Neither did the teachers of colored schools, nor the officers and agents of those charitable and missionary a.s.sociations of the North, whose especial work and purpose was the elevation and enlightenment of the colored man, see fit to unite in that torrent of detraction which swept over the country in regard to the "Bureau" and its agents. But then, it may be that none of these cla.s.ses were able to judge truly and impartially of its character and works! They may have been prepossessed in its favor to an extent which prevented a fair and honest determination in regard to it.
Certain it is that those who stood upon the other side--those who inst.i.tuted and carried on rebellion, or the greater part of them, and every one of those who opposed reconstruction, who fought to the last moment the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the black; every one who denied the right of the nation to emanc.i.p.ate the slave; every one who clamored for the payment of the State debts contracted during the war; all of those who proposed and imposed the famous "black codes,"--every one of these cla.s.ses and every man of each cla.s.s avowed himself unable to find words to express the infamy, corruption, and oppression which characterized the administration of that climacteric outrage upon a brave, generous, overwhelmed but unconquered --forgiving but not to be forgiven, people.
They felt themselves to have been in all things utterly innocent and guileless. The luck of war had been terribly against them, they considered, but the right remained with them. They were virtuous.
Their opponents had not only been the aggressors at the outset, but had shown themselves little better than savages by the manner in which they had conducted the war; and, to crown the infamy of their character, had imposed upon "the South" at its close that most nefarious of all detestable forms of oppressive degradation, "the Bureau." Their orators grew magniloquent over its tyrannical oppression; the Southern press overflowed with that marvellous exuberance of diatribe of which they are the acknowledged masters--to all of which the complaisant North gave a ready and subservient concurrence, until the very name reeked in the public mind with infamous a.s.sociations and degrading ideas.
A few men tried to stem the torrent. Some who had been in its service even dared to insist that they had not thereby rendered themselves infamous and unworthy. The nation listened for a time with kindly pity to their indignant protests, and then buried the troublesome and persistent clamorers in the silence of calm but considerate disbelief. They were quietly allowed to sink into the charitable grave of unquestioning oblivion. It was not any personal attaint which befouled their names and blasted their public prospects, but simply the fact that they had obeyed the nation"s behest and done a work a.s.signed to them by the country"s rulers. Thus it came to pa.s.s that in one third of the country it was an ineffaceable brand of shame to have been at any time an agent or officer of this Bureau, and throughout the rest of the country it was accounted a fair ground for suspicion. In it all, the conquering element was simply the obedient indicator which recorded and proclaimed the sentiment and wish of the conquered. The words of the enemy were always regarded as being stamped with the mint-mark of truth and verity, while the declarations of our allies accounted so apparently false and spurious as to be unworthy of consideration, even when attested by svvorn witnesses and written in blood upon a page of history tear blotted and stained with savage deeds. All this was perfectly natural, however, and arose, almost unavoidably, from the circ.u.mstances under which the inst.i.tution was created and the duties which it was called upon to discharge. It may not be amiss to consider again the circ.u.mstances under which it came to exist.
This is how this inst.i.tution had its origin: As the war to put down rebellion progressed and our armies advanced farther and farther into the heart of the Confederacy, the most devoted and malignant adherents of the Confederate cause abandoned their homes and all that they could not easily take with them, and fled within the Confederate lines. Those white people who were adverse to the Confederate cause, or at least lukewarm in its support, spurred by the rigors of conscription and the dangers of proscription and imprisonment, took their lives in their hands, left their homes, and fled by every available road to the shelter of the Federal forces. Those who had no homes--the slaves--either deserted by their owners or fancying they saw in that direction a glimmer of possible freedom, swarmed in flank and rear of every blue-clad column which invaded the Confederacy, by thousands and tens of thousands. They fled as the Israelites did from the bondage of Egypt, with that sort of instinctive terror which has in all ages led individuals, peoples, and races to flee from the scene of oppression. The whites who came to us were called "refugees," and the blacks at first "contrabands," and after January 1, 1863, "freedmen." Of course they had to be taken care of. The "refugee" brought nothing with him; the freedrnan had nothing to bring. The abandoned lands of the Confederates were, in many cases, susceptible of being used to employ and supply these needy cla.s.ses who came to us for aid and sustenance. It was to do this that the Freedmen"s Bureau was created.
Its mission was twofold--to extend the helping hand to the needy who without such aid must have perished by disease and want, and to reduce the expenses of such charity by the cultivation and utilization of abandoned lands. It was both a business and a missionary enterprise. This was its work and mission until the war ended. Its "agents" were chosen from among the wounded veteran officers of our army, or were detached from active service by reason of their supposed fitness on account of character or attainments. Almost every one of them had won honor with the loss of limb or of health; all had the indors.e.m.e.nt and earnest approval of men high in command of our armies, who had personal knowledge of their character and believed in their fitness. This renders it all the more remarkable that these men should so soon and so universally, as was stoutly alleged and weakly believed, have become thieves and vagabonds --corrupters of the blacks and oppressors of the whites. It only shows how altogether impossible it is to foresee the consequences of any important social or political movement upon the lives and characters of those exposed to its influences.
When the war ended there were four millions of men, women, and children without homes, houses, lands, money, food, knowledge, law, right, family, friends, or possibility for self-support. All these the Bureau adopted. They const.i.tuted a vast family of foundlings, whose care was a most difficult and delicate matter, but there was not one among them all who complained of the treatment they received.
It is somewhat strange, too, that the officers of this Branch of the service should have all misbehaved in exactly the same manner.
Their acts of oppression and outrage were always perpetrated in defence of some supposed right of a defenceless and friendless race, overwhelmed with poverty--the bondmen of ignorance--who had no money with which to corrupt, no art with which to beguile, and no power with which to overawe these representatives of authority.
For the first time in the history of mankind, the corrupt and unprincipled agents of undefined power became the servants, friends, protectors, agents, and promoters of the poor and weak and the oppressors of the rich, the strong, the learned, and the astute.
It may be said that this view cannot be true; that thousands of men selected from the officers of our citizen-soldiery by the unanswerable certificate of disabling wounds and the added prestige of their commander"s recommendation, a cla.s.s of men in physical, intellectual and moral power and attainments far superior to the average of the American people--it may be said that such could not have become all at once infamously bad; and, if they did suffer such transformation, would have oppressed the blacks at the instigation of the whites, who were willing and able to pay well for such subversion of authority, and not the reverse. This would seem to be true, but we are not now dealing with speculations, but with facts! We know that they did become such a pest because at the South they were likened to the plagues of Egypt, and the North reiterated and affirmed this cry and condoled with the victims of the oppression with much show of penitence, and an unappeasable wrath toward the instruments of the iniquity. Thus the voice of the people--that voice which is but another form of the voice of G.o.d--proclaimed these facts to the world, so that they must thenceforth be held indisputable and true beyond the utmost temerity of scepticism.
The _facts_ remain. The puzzling _why_, let whosoever will endeavor to elucidate.
Perhaps the most outrageous and debasing of all the acts of the Bureau, in the eyes of those who love to term themselves "the South,"
was the fact that its officers and agents, first of all, allowed the colored man to be sworn in opposition to and in contradiction of the word of a white man.
That this should be exasperating and degrading to the Southern white man was most natural and reasonable. The very corner-stone of Southern legislation and jurisprudence for more than a hundred years was based upon this idea: the negro can have no rights, and can testify as to no rights or wrongs, as against a white man. So that the master might take his slave with him when he committed murder or did any other act in contravention of law or right, and that slave was like the mute eunuch of the seraglio, silent and voiceless before the law. Indeed, the law had done for the slave-owner, with infinitely more of mercy and kindness, what the mutilators of the upper Nile were wont to do for the keepers of the harems of Cairo and Constantinople--provided them with slaves who should see and hear and serve, but should never testify of what they saw and knew. To reverse this rule, grown ancient and venerable by the practice of generations, to open the mouths which had so long been sealed, was only less infamous and dangerous than to accord credence to the words they might utter. To do both was to "turn back the tide of time," indeed, and it pa.s.sed the power of language to portray the anger, disgust, and degradation which it produced in the Southern mind. To be summoned before the officer of the Bureau, confronted with a negro who denied his most solemn averments, and was protected in doing so by the officer who, perhaps, showed the bias of the oppressor by believing the negro instead of the gentleman, was unquestionably, to the Southerner, the most degrading ordeal he could by any possibility be called upon to pa.s.s through.
From this it will be understood that Colonel Desmit pa.s.sed a most uneasy night after Nimbus had left his house. He had been summoned before the Bureau! He had expected it. Hardly had he given way to his petulant anger when he recognized the folly of his course.
The demeanor of the colored man had been so "sa.s.sy" and aggravating, however, that no one could have resisted his wrath, he was sure.
Indeed, now that he came to look back at it, he wondered that he had been so considerate. He was amazed that he had not shot the impudent rascal on the spot instead of striking him with his walking-stick, which he was very confident was the worst that could be urged against him. However, that was enough, for he remembered with horror that, not long before, this same Bureau officer had actually imprisoned a most respectable and correct man for having whipped a "n.i.g.g.e.r" at work in his crop, who had been "too sa.s.sy"
to be tolerated by any gentleman.
So it was with much trepidation that the old man went into the town the next morning, secured the services of a lawyer, and prepared for his trial before the "Bureau." Nimbus was intercepted as he came into town with his wife, and an attempt made to induce him to withdraw the prosecution, but that high-minded litigant would hear nothing of the proposed compromise. He had put his hand to the plow and would not look back. He had appealed to the law--"the Bureau"
and only "the Bureau" should decide it. So Colonel Desmit and his lawyer asked a few hours" delay and prepared themselves to resist and disprove the charge of a.s.sault upon Nimbus. The lawyer once proposed to examine the papers in the case, but Desmit said that was useless--the boy was no liar, though they must make him out one if they could. So, at the time appointed, with his lawyer and train of witnesses, he went before "the Bureau," and there met Nimbus and his wife, Lugena.
"The Bureau" wore the uniform of a captain of United States infantry, and was a man about forty-five years of age, grave and serious of look, with an empty sleeve folded decorously over his breast. His calm blue eyes, pale, refined face, and serious air gave him the appearance of a minister rather than a ruthless oppressor, but his reputation for cruelty among certain people was as well established as that of Jeffreys. He greeted Mr. Desmit and his attorney with somewhat constrained politeness, and when they were seated proceeded to read the complaint, which simply recited that Colonel Desmit, having employed Lugena, the wife of complainant, at a given rate per month, had failed to make payment, and had finally, without cause, ordered her off his premises.