The Fanatics/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
THE CONTRABANDS
It was now that a new unpleasantness began to harass the already burdened people of Ohio. The decree of General Butler making all slaves who came into camp contraband of war, affected the negroes not only in his immediate vicinity, but wherever there was a Union camp. Drunk with the dream of freedom, at the first intimation of immunity, they hastened to throw off their shackles and strike for the long-coveted liberty. Women, children, young, able-bodied men and the feeble and infirm, all hastened towards the Union lines. Thence, it was usually an easy matter, or at least, one possible of accomplishment, to work their way North to the free states.
Hardly a camp, hardly a column in which the officers were not reputed vigorously to oppose the admission of slaves but presented a strange and varied appearance. In the rear, but keeping close to their saviors always, straggled a lot of half-clad, eager negroes of all ages and conditions, bearing every conceivable form of movable property—bags, bundles, bedclothes, cooking utensils, and even an occasional calf or sheep trailed along. Many, indeed, found employment as the servants of officers, where their traditional qualifications as cooks or valets came into full play. But for the most part, they simply hung on, worrying and embarrassing the soldiers with their importunities, sickening and dying from fatigue and exposure, and conducting themselves altogether, like the great, helpless, irresponsible children that they were.
To those, who only a few years ago, primed with the prejudices of their masters, had looked upon the Yankees as monsters, there had come a great change, and every man who wore the blue had become as God's own vicegerent. They had been told that the Yankees had horns, and many of them believed it, but on contact, the only horn that they had found was the horn of plenty, and their old faith in their masters' infallibility died.
They were not all a burden, though. In the gloom of the dark hours, their light-heartedness cheered on the march; their pranks, their hymns and their ditties made life and light. Through the still watches of the night, the lonely sentinel on his beat, heard their singing and sometimes he thought of home with a choking at his throat, and had a vision of a tender mother singing to the babe upon her breast, and he looked up to the stars, and was alone no more.
The poor blacks, wandering in the darkness of their ignorance were as frightened children in the night. They had lost faith in their masters, but it was not lost to them entire, only transferred to these new beings, who mastered them by the power of love. Is it any wonder that they shouted and sang, and that often their songs were "Out of Old Egypt," "De Promised Lan," and "Go Down Moses"? One of the principal songs they sang, ran thus, a low minor melody at first, then breaking in the improvisation into a joyous shout:
Oh, Lawd, de life was ha'd;
Dey said yo' bondage won't be long,
Oh, Lawd, de life was ha'd.
Dey preached an' dey prayed, but de time went on,
Oh, Lawd, de life was ha'd;
De night was black w'en dey talked of dawn,
Oh, Lawd, de life was ha'd:
We t'ought 'twas day in de lightin' flash,
Oh, Lawd, de life was ha'd,
But night come down wid de mastah's lash,
Oh, Lawd, de life was ha'd."
And, then, some clear voice would break into further improvisation,
T'ank Gawd, hit's bettah now,
De Yankee man is de man fu' mе,
T'ank Gawd, hit's bettah now—
He gi' me braid an' he gi' me meat,
T'ank Gawd, hit's bettah now,
Eatin' nevah did seem so sweet,
T'ank Gawd, hit's bettah now."
For them it was better now, though they toiled and struggled and fell by the wayside. The abstract idea of freedom which they did not yet understand, had become a fetich to them. And over the burning sands, or through the winter's snow where they trudged with bleeding feet, they kept their stalwart faith in it. They were free at last, and being free, no evil thing could hurt them.
It was strange that most of them should not have become discouraged and gone back to the fleshpots still in Egypt. The Union officers did not understand these great children who flocked so insistently about their heels. Some were harsh to them, and others who would have been kind, did not know how. But they staid on and on, clinging to the garments of the army, going from camp to camp, until they swept like a plague of locusts into some Northern town.
Ohio, placed as she was, just on the border of the slave territory, was getting more than her share of this unwelcome population, and her white citizens soon began to chafe at it. Was their free soil to become the haven for escaped negroes? Was this to be the stopping ground for every runaway black from the South? Would they not become a menace to the public safety? Would they not become a public charge and sorely strain that generosity that was needed to encourage and aid the soldiers in the field? These and a thousand such conjectures and questions were rife about the hapless blacks. The whole gamut of argument that had been used in '49, '50 and '51 was run again. The menace of Maryland with her free negroes was again held up. The cry rose for the enforcement of the law for the restriction of emancipated negroes, while others went to the extreme of crying for the expulsion of all blacks from the state.
Since 1829, there had been a gradual change for the better in the attitude of Ohio towards her colored citizens, but now, all over the state, and especially in the southern counties and towns there had come a sudden revulsion of feeling, and the people rose generally against the possibility of being overwhelmed by an influx of runaway slaves. Their temper grew and ominous mutterings were heard on every side. The first great outburst of popular wrath came when negro men began offering themselves for military service, and some extremists urged the policy of accepting them.
"Take them," said the extremists, "and you break the backbone of the South's power. While the Southern men are in the field, fighting against the government their negro slaves are at home raising supplies for them, and caring for their families. When we enlist them, whom have they to leave for such duties?"
But all the North held up its hands and cried, "What, put black men beside our boys to fight? Let slaves share with them the honor and glory of military service? Never!"
The army itself hurled back its protest, "We are fighting for the Union; we are not fighting for niggers, and we will not fight with them."
From none of the states came a more pronounced refusal than from Ohio. She had set her face against men of color. What wonder then, that their coming into the state aroused all her antagonistic blood? Here, for the time, all party lines fell away, and all the people were united in one cause—resistance to the invasion of the black horde. It was at this time that Butler's proclamation struck through the turmoil like a thunderbolt, and the word "Contraband" became a menace to the whites and a reproach to the blacks.
The free blacks of Dorbury themselves, took it up, and even before they could pronounce the word that disgusted them, they were fighting their unfortunate brothers of the South as vigorously as their white neighbors. "Contraband" became the fighting banter for black people in Ohio. But the stream kept pouring in. In spite of resistance, abuse and oppression, there was a certain calm determination about these fugitive slaves that was of the stuff that made the Puritans. As far North as Oberlin and Cleveland, they did not often make their way. If it was their intention to stop in Ohio at all, they usually ended their journey at the more Southern towns. While the spirit in the Northern towns was calmer, it was, perhaps, just as well that they were not overrun. In Cleveland, especially, numerous masters of the south, averse to making slaves of their own offspring, had colonized their discarded negro mistresses and their illegitimate offspring, and these people, blinded by God knows what idea of their own position, in the eyes of the world, had made an aristocracy of their own shame.
In Dorbury, the negro aristocracy was not one founded upon mixed blood, but upon free birth or manumission before the war. Even the church, whose broad wings are supposed to cover all sorts and conditions of men, turned its face against the poor children of a later bondage.
After much difficulty, the negro contingent in Dorbury had succeeded in establishing a small house of worship in an isolated section known as "the commons." Here, according to their own views, they met Sunday after Sunday to give praise and adoration to the God whom they, as well as the whites, claimed as theirs, and hither, impelled by the religious instincts of their race, came the contrabands on reaching the town. But were they received with open arms? No, the God that fostered black and white alike, rich and poor, was not known to father these poor fugitives, so lately out of bondage. The holy portals were closed in their faces, and dark-skinned pastors, not yet able to put the "H" in the educational shibboleth, drew aside their robes as they passed them.
Opposition was even expressed to their fellowship with the Christian body. It reached its height when, on a memorable Sunday—a quarterly meeting day in fact, three families of the despised, presented themselves for membership in the Wesleyan chapel. The spirit had been running high that day, and there had been much shouting and praising the Lord for his goodness. But at this act of innocent audacity, the whole tone of the meeting changed. From violent joy, it became one of equally violent anger and contempt. These outcast families seeking God, had stepped upon the purple robes of these black aristocrats, and they were as one for defiance.
One aged woman, trembling with anger and religious excitement, tottered up, and, starting for the door, hurled this brief condemnation of the culprits who dared desire membership in her church: "W'y, befo' I'd see dis chu'ch, dis chu'ch dat we free people built give up to dese conterbands, I'd see hit to' down, brick by brick."
She hurried down the stairs, and a number followed her. But some stayed to remonstrate with the unreasoning contrabands. They were told to form a church of their own and to worship to-gether.
"But," said their spokesman, who had preached down on the plantation, "whyn't we jes' ez well wo'ship wid you? We's all colo'ed togethah."
The pastor tried in vain to show them the difference between people who had been freed three or four years before and those just made free, but somehow, the contraband and none of his company could see it, and the meeting was broken up. The rejected Christians, seeking their poor shanties in amazement, and the aristocrats gathering to talk among themselves over the invasion of their temple.
With both white and black against them, it could not be long before the bad feeling against these poor people must break out into open attack. Theirs was a helpless condition, but they were not entirely alone. In all the town, they had no stronger friend than Stephen Van Doren. A Southerner by birth and education, he understood these people, who had for two centuries been the particular wards of the South. While he had no faith in the ultimate success of the Union arms, and believed that all these blacks must eventually go back into slavery whence they had come, yet he reasoned that they were there, and such being the case, all that was possible, ought to be done for them.
The negroes were quick to recognize a friend, and his house soon became the court to which they took all their grievances. He had been keeping indoors, but now he began to circulate among his Southern friends, and to do what he could to help his poor protégés.
It was then that the first inklings of a contemplated attack upon them came to his ears. Some of the citizens of Dorbury, inspired by the public spirit which barroom speeches arouse, had determined to rise and throw off the stigma of negro invasion. The embers of the people's passions had long smouldered, and when a pseudo-politician in the glow of drink had advised them to rise and drive the black plague beyond their borders, they had determined to do so.
The conduct of the whole matter had been put into the hands of Raymond Stothard, for the politician declined to lead such an assault, upon the plea that it was hardly the proper thing for a man who aspired to the legislature.
Stothard was chosen, first, because he was the brother of the prosecuting attorney, which would give the movement prestige, and next, because he was capable of doing anything when he was drunk. He usually was drunk or becoming so. He was drunk when he made the speech which instantly made him the leader of the aggressive movement.
"Gen'lemen," he said, "you all know me, and you know that I ain't the man to try to lead you into an unjust fight, now am I?" He was almost plaintive and the crowd about him cried, "No, no!"
"Thank you," he went on, swaying at his table. "Thanks, I'm glad to see that you per—preciate my motives. You all know my brother, he's a straight—straight man, ain't he? You all know Philip Stothard. Now I'm a peaceable man, I am. But to-night, I say our rights and liberties are being invaded, that's what they are. All the niggers in the South are crowding in on us, and pretty soon, we won't have a place to lay our heads. They'll undercharge the laborer and drive him out of house and home. They will live on leavings, and the men who are eating white bread and butter will have to get down to the level of these black hounds.
"I don't like 'em, anyhow. None of us like 'em. The whole war is on their account. If it hadn't been for them, we'd have been friends with the South to-day, but they've estranged us from our brothers, rent the country asunder, and now they're coming up here to crowd us out of our towns. Gentlemen, I won't say any more. It shall never be said that Ray Stothard was instrumental in beginning a revolt against law and order. My brother's prosecuting attorney, you know, and we stand for the integrity of the law. But if I had my way, I'd take force, and clear this town of every nigger in it. Gentlemen, drink with me."
His final remark was the most eloquent pleas he could have made. The gentlemen drank with Mr. Stothard and voted his plan for saving their homes and workshops a good one.
One man in passing bad heard the sound of speechmaking within, and out of idle curiosity had paused at the saloon door in time to hear Stothard's stirring remarks. Stephen Van Doren listened with horror to what the drunken rowdy proposed, and then went with all speed to his brother.
"You're too sensible a man, Van Doren," said the prosecuting attorney, "to believe that I have anything to do with this matter or would countenance it. But I can do nothing whatever with this brother of mine; there is only one thing to do, and that is to warn the negroes."
"They are not used to fighting for themselves. They would be as helpless as children and could be killed like sheep in a pen."
"They have their freedom, taken as you and I both believe, illegally, let them rise to the occasion which liberty demands," and so the lawyer dismissed the subject, although Van Doren gave back the answer that what these blacks had to meet was not the result of liberty, but the mockery of it.
Leaving Philip Stothard's house, Stephen Van Doren went his way, torn between conflicting opinions as to his duty. Would he be proving a traitor to his fellow-citizens if he told the negroes of the designs against them? But were these men of the lowest social stratum, loafers, ignoramuses and fanatics his fellow-citizens? Was it not right that these poor fellows, slaves as they had been, and would be again doubtless, should be allowed the chance of defending themselves against assault? He argued with himself long and deeply that night, and in the end he decided that the blacks must be warned. He did not know when the attack would take place. Indeed, he felt sure that it would wait upon inspiration and opportunity, but the intended victims could be put upon their guard and then be left to look out themselves. He could do no more. Perhaps he had already done too much.
On the morrow, he saw some of the blacks, and after cautioning them to secrecy as to what they should hear, told them of their danger. They heard him with horror and lamentation They were bitterly disappointed. Was this the freedom for which they had toiled? Was this the welcome they received from a free state? They already knew how the church had greeted them. But they were the more shocked because they found out for the first time that politics could be as hard as religion.
One advantage which the negroes were to have was that in the sudden passion against their race the whites made no distinction as to bond or free, manumitted or contraband. This, of necessity, drew them all together, and they grew closer to each other in sympathy than they had yet known.
The drawing together was not one of spirit only, but of fact. They began to have meetings at night after the warning, and a code of signals was arranged to call all of them together at the first sign of danger.
Meanwhile, Stothard and his confederates, believing that all their workings had been done in profoundest secrecy, only waited an opportunity to strike effectively and finally.
The leader's first open act occurred one day when he seemed to have found an audience of sympathizers. He was strolling along busy with his usual employment of doing nothing, when he noticed a crowd gathered at a point upon the street that led from the railway station. He sauntered towards it, but quickened his pace when he found that the centre of the group was a small family of black folk who had just arrived from some place south of the river. There were a father and mother, both verging on old age, a stalwart, strong-limbed son, apparently about twenty, and two younger children. They were all ragged, barefoot and unkempt. They had paused to inquire the way to the negro portion of the town, and immediately the people, some with animosity, some with amusement, had gathered around them.
"What's all this?" asked the attorney's brother, as he reached the group. None of the whites vouchsafed him an answer, and he turned his attention to the negroes.
"More niggers," he exclaimed. "Why in hell don't you people stay where you belong?"
The blacks eyed him in silence.
"Why don't you answer when I talk to you?" He took a step forward, and the outcasts cowered before him, all save the son. He did not move a step and there was a light in his eye that was not good to see. It was the glare of an animal brought to bay. Stothard saw it and advanced no further, but went on.
"If I had you across the line, I'd teach you manners." The old woman began to cry.
"We come up hyeah," said the young negro, "'cause we hyeahed it was a free state."
"It's free for white people, not for niggers."
"We hyeahed it was free fu' evahbody, dat's de reason we come, me an' mammy an' pappy an' de chillun. We ain't a bothahin' nobody. We jes' wants to fin' some of ouah own people."
"There's enough of your people here now, and too many, and we don't want any more. You'd better go back where you come from."
"We cain't go back thaih. Hit's been a long ways a comin', an' we's 'bout wo' out."
"That's none of our business; back you go. Gentlemen, unless we put our foot down now, we shall be overrun by these people. I call you to act now. Turn them back at the portals of the city. Ohio as a state and Dorbury as a town does not want these vagabonds."
Unseen by Stothard, another man attracted by the gathering had joined the crowd, and now his voice broke the silence. "Who made you, Ray Stothard, the spokesman for the people of Ohio?"
The aristocratic loafer turned to meet the eye of Stephen Van Doren, and his face went red in a second.
"I don't know what right you've got to speak, Van Doren, you've done everything you could to hurt the Union."
"It is to the Union's greatest discredit that it has such men as you on its side."
"So you're in favor of letting the niggers overrun the town?"
"I'm in favor of fair play, and I intend to help these people find their fellows."
"Humph, what are you anyhow? First a copperhead, then a rebel, then the champion of contrabands. You're neither fish, flesh, fowl nor good red herring."
"Whatever I may be, I'm not a conspirator." Stothard blanched at the word. "Nor," went on the old man, "am I a barroom orator and leader of ruffians. Come, boys," he said addressing the negroes, and they grinned broadly and hopefully at the familiar conduct and manner of address of the South which they knew and loved. Away they went behind Van Doren.
"Go on, Steve Van Doren," Stothard crowed after the old man like a vanquished cock. "But you may have more work to do before you get through with your nigger pets."
"All right," was the sturdy answer. "Whenever you and your hounds come for me, you'll find me waiting, and by heaven, you'll leave me weightier men by a few ounces than you've ever been before."
The younger man attempted to raise a jeer as the other man passed down the street. But the crowd refused to join him. There was something too majestic in the carriage of the old copperhead. He commanded an inevitable, if reluctant respect. The same independent habit of thought and sturdy disregard of consequences that made him a copperhead, made him a friend to these poor helpless blacks.
Stothard, however, was not done. He was inflamed with anger at his defeat and the shame put upon him. He hurriedly left the crowd, and went at once to the rendezvous of his confederates. All that day and night he harangued them as they came in one by one, setting before them the alleged dangers of the case, and painting the affair of the afternoon in lurid colors. By midnight, drunken men who mistook intoxication for patriotism, talked solemnly to each other of the "Black invasion," and shook hands in the unity of determination to resent this attack upon the dignity of the state.
All the next day there was an ominous quiet in Dorbury. Men who had no other occupation than lounging about the courthouse corner and in the barrooms were not to be seen. There were no violent harangues in the livery stables and groceries. Mr. Raymond Stothard was not out.
About dusk the clans began to gather. One by one they came from their holes and hiding-places and made their way to the rendezvous. Over their drinks, they talked in whispers and the gaslight flared on drawn, swollen, terrible faces. Their general had found the wherewithal to buy liquor and he plied them well.
Meanwhile on old McLean street, where stood the house of one of Dorbury's free black citizens another gathering equally silent, equally stealthy and determined was taking place. The signal had gone forth, the warning had been received and free negro and contraband were drawing together for mutual protection. Not a word was spoken among them. It was not the time for talk. But they huddled together in the half-lit room and only their hard, labored breathing broke the silence. To the freemen, it meant the maintenance of all that they had won by quiet industry. To the contrabands, it meant the life or death of all their hopes of manhood. Now all artificial lines were broken down, and all of them were brothers by the tie of necessity. Contraband and the man who a few days ago had looked down upon him with supreme contempt, now pressed shoulder to shoulder a common greyness in their faces, the same black dread in their hearts. In the back room sick with fear, waited the women and children. Upon the issue of the night depended all that they had prayed for. Was it to be peace and home or exile and slavery? Their mother hearts yearned over the children who clustered helpless about their feet. "If not for us, God, for these, our little ones," they prayed. Their minds went back to the plantation, its pleasures and its pains. They remembered all. There had been the dances and the frolics, and the meetings, but these paled into insignificance before the memory of the field, the overseer and the lash. Often, oh, too often, they had bared their backs to the cruel thongs. Day by day they had toiled and sweated under the relentless sun. But must. these, the products of their poor bodies, do likewise? Must they too, toil without respite, and labor without reward? They clasped their children in their arms with a hopelessness that was almost aggression.
The little black babies that night did not know why their mothers hugged them with such terrible intensity or hushed them with such fierce tenderness when they cried.
It was nearly midnight when the whisper ran round the circle in the front room, "They are coming, they are coming!" and the men drew themselves closer together. The sound of the shuffling of many foot and the noisy song of a drunken mob awoke the echoes of the quiet street. Then, of a sudden, the songs ceased as if some authoritative voice had compelled silence. Nearer and nearer moved the foot, softer now, but with drunken uncertainty. They paused at the gate. The lock clicked. The men within the room were tense as bonded steel. Then came a thunderous knock at the door. No answer.
There was a pause, and apparently a silent conference. The rioters had sought several other suspected houses, the chapel among them, and found them empty. Here then, was the place which they had definitely settled as the negroes' stronghold.
"Open in the name of the law," came a voice.
The blacks huddled closer together. Then came a blow upon the door as from the stock of a gun.
"Gently," said the voice, "gently." But the spirit of violence having once been given rein could not be controlled, and blow after blow rained upon the none too strong door, until it yielded and fell in with a crash. But here, the mob found themselves confronted by a surprise. Instead of a cowering crowd of helpless men, they found themselves confronted by a solid black wall of desperate men who stood their ground and fought like soldiers. At first, it was fist, stave, club and the swift, silent knife, and only the gasp of forced breath and the groan of some fallen man told that the terrible fight went on. Then a solitary shot rang out, and the fusillade began. The blacks began to retreat, because they had few weapons, putting their women-folks behind them. Gradually, the white horde poured into the room and filled it.
"Now, boys," said Stothard's voice from the rear, "rush them!" and he sprang forward. But a black face confronted him, its features distorted and its eyes blazing. It was the face of the contraband boy whom he had abused the day before. A knife flashed in the dim light, and in a moment more was buried in the leader's heart. The shriek, half of fear, half of surprise which was on his lips, died there, and he fell forward with a groan, while the black man sped from the room. The wild-eyed boy who went out into the night to be lost forever, killed Stothard, not because he was fighting for a principle, but because the white man had made his mother cry the day before. His ideas were still primitive.
The rout of the negroes was now complete, and they fled in all directions. Some ran away, only to return when the storm had passed; others, terrified by the horror of the night, went, never to return, and their homes are occupied in Dorbury to-day by the men who drove them from them.
The whites, too, had had enough, and their leader being killed, they slunk away with his body into the night which befriended them.