The Clansman Read online

  He had not come to plead or persuade. He had eluded the vigilance of his daughter and nurse, escaped with the aid of the brown woman and her black allies, and at the peril of his life had come to command. Every energy of his indomitable will he was using now to keep from fainting. He felt that if he could but look those men in the face they would not dare to defy his word.

  He shambled painfully to his feet amid a silence that was awful. Again the sheer wonder of the man’s personality held the imagination of the audience. His audacity, his fanaticism, and the strange contradictions of his character stirred the mind of friend and foe alike—this man who tottered there before them, holding off Death with his big ugly left hand, while with his right he clutched at the throat of his foe! Honest and dishonest, cruel and tender, great and mean, a party leader who scorned public opinion, a man of conviction, yet the most unscrupulous politician, a philosopher who preached the equality of man, yet a tyrant who hated the world and despised all men!

  His very presence before them an open defiance of love and life and death, would not his word ring omnipotent when the verdict was rendered? Every man in the great courtroom believed it as he looked on the rows of Senators hanging on his lips.

  He spoke at first with unnatural vigour, a faint flush of fever lighting his white face, his voice quivering yet penetrating.

  “Upon that man among you who shall dare to acquit the President,” he boldly threatened, “I hurl the everlasting curse of a Nation—an infamy that shall rive and blast his children’s children until they shrink from their own name as from the touch of pollution!”

  He gasped for breath, his restless hands fumbled at his throat, he staggered and would have fallen had not his black guards caught him. He revived, pushed them back on their haunches, and sat down. And then, with his big club foot thrust straight in front of him, his gnarled hands gripping the arms of his chair, the massive head shaking back and forth like a wounded lion, he continued his speech, which grew in fierce intensity with each laboured breath.

  The effect was electrical. Every Senator leaned forward to catch the lowest whisper, and so awful was the suspense in the galleries the listeners grew faint.

  When this last mad challenge was hurled into the teeth of the judges, the dazed crowd paused for breath and the galleries burst into a storm of applause.

  In vain the Chief Justice rose, his lionlike face livid with anger, pounded for order, and commanded the galleries to be cleared.

  They laughed at him. Roar after roar was the answer. The Chief Justice in loud angry tones ordered the Sergeant-at-Arms to clear the galleries.

  Men leaned over the rail and shouted in his face:

  “He can’t do it!”

  “He hasn’t got men enough!”

  “Let him try if he dares!”

  The doorkeepers attempted to enforce order by announcing it in the name of the peace and dignity and sovereign power of the Senate over its sacred chamber. The crowd had now become a howling mob which jeered them.

  Senator Grimes, of Iowa, rose and demanded the reason why the Senate was thus insulted and the order had not been enforced.

  A volley of hisses greeted his question.

  The Chief Justice, evidently quite nervous, declared the order would be enforced.

  Senator Trumbull, of Illinois, moved that the offenders be arrested.

  In reply the crowd yelled:

  “We’d like to see you do it!”

  At length the mob began to slowly leave the galleries under the impression that the High Court had adjourned.

  Suddenly a man cried out:

  “Hold on! They ain’t going to adjourn. Let’s see it out!”

  Hundreds took their seats again. In the corridors a crowd began to sing in wild chorus:

  “Old Grimes is dead, that poor old man.” The women joined with glee. Between the verses the leader would curse the Iowa Senator as a traitor and copperhead. The singing could be distinctly heard by the Court as its roar floated through the open doors.

  When the Senate Chamber had been cleared and the most disgraceful scene that ever occurred within its portals had closed, the High Court Impeachment went into secret session to consider the evidence and its verdict.

  Within an hour from its adjournment it was known to the Managers that seven Republican Senators were doubtful, and that they formed a group under the leadership of two great constitutional lawyers who still believed in the sanctity of a judge’s oath—Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois, and William Pitt Fessenden, of Maine. Around them had gathered Senators Grimes, of Iowa, Van Winkle, of West Virginia, Fowler, of Tennessee, Henderson, of Missouri, and Ross, of Kansas. The Managers were in a panic. If these men dared to hold together with the twelve Democrats, the President would be acquitted by one vote—they could count thirty-four certain for conviction.

  The Revolutionists threw to the winds the last scruple of decency, went into caucus and organized a conspiracy for forcing, within the few days which must pass before the verdict, these judges to submit to their decree.

  Fessenden and Trumbull were threatened with impeachment and expulsion from the Senate and bombarded by the most furious assaults from the press, which denounced them as infamous traitors, “as mean, repulsive, and noxious as hedgehogs in the cages of a travelling menagerie.”

  A mass meeting was held in Washington which said:

  “Resolved, that we impeach Fessenden, Trumbull, and Grimes at the bar of justice and humanity, as traitors before whose guilt the infamy of Benedict Arnold becomes respectability and decency.”

  The Managers sent out a circular telegram to every State from which came a doubtful judge:

  “Great danger to the peace of the country if impeachment fails. Send your Senators public opinion by resolutions, letters, and delegates.”

  The man who excited most wrath was Ross, of Kansas. That Kansas of all States should send a “traitor” was more than the spirits of the Revolutionists could bear.

  A mass meeting in Leavenworth accordingly sent him the telegram:

  “Kansas has heard the evidence and demands the conviction of the President.

  “D. R. Anthony and 1,000 others.”

  To this Ross replied:

  “I have taken an oath to do impartial justice. I trust I shall have the courage and honesty to vote according to the dictates of my judgment and for the highest good of my country.”

  He got his answer:

  “Your motives are Indian contracts and greenbacks. Kansas repudiates you as she does all perjurers and skunks.”

  The Managers organized an inquisition for the purpose of torturing and badgering Ross into submission. His one vote was all they lacked.

  They laid siege to little Vinnie Ream, the sculptress, to whom Congress had awarded a contract for the statue of Lincoln. Her studio was in the crypt of the Capitol. They threatened her with the wrath of Congress, the loss of her contract, and ruin of her career unless she found a way to induce Senator Ross, whom she knew, to vote against the President.

  Such an attempt to gain by fraud the verdict of a common court of law would have sent its promoters to prison for felony. Yet the Managers of this case, before the highest tribunal of the world, not only did it without a blush of shame, but cursed as a traitor every man who dared to question their motives.

  As the day approached for the Court to vote, Senator Ross remained to friend and foe a sealed mystery. Reporters swarmed about him, the target of a thousand eyes. His rooms were besieged by his radical constituents who had been imported from Kansas in droves to browbeat him into a promise to convict. His movements day and night, his breakfast, his dinner, his supper, the clothes he wore, the colour of his cravat, his friends and companions, were chronicled in hourly bulletins and flashed over the wires from the delirious Capital.

  Chief Justice Chase called the High Court of Impeachment to order, to render its verdict. Old Stoneman had again been carried to his chair in the arms of two negroes, and sat with his cold eyes sear
ching the faces of the judges.

  The excitement had reached the highest pitch of intensity. A sense of choking solemnity brooded over the scene. The feeling grew that the hour had struck which would test the capacity of man to establish an enduring Republic.

  The Clerk read the Eleventh Article, drawn by the Great Commoner as the supreme test.

  As its last words died away the Chief Justice rose amid a silence that was agony, placed his hands on the sides of the desk as if to steady himself, and said:

  “Call the roll.”

  Each Senator answered “Guilty” or “Not Guilty,” exactly as they had been counted by the Managers, until Fessenden’s name was called.

  A moment of stillness and the great lawyer’s voice rang high, cold, clear, and resonant as a Puritan church bell on Sunday morning:

  “Not Guilty!”

  A murmur, half groan and sigh, half cheer and cry, rippled the great hall.

  The other votes were discounted now save that of Edmund G. Ross, of Kansas. No human being on earth knew what this man would do save the silent invisible man within his soul.

  Over the solemn trembling silence the voice of the Chief Justice rang:

  “Senator Ross, how say you? Is the respondent, Andrew Johnson, guilty or not guilty of a high misdemeanor as charged in this article?”

  The great Judge bent forward; his brow furrowed as Ross arose.

  His fellow Senators watched him spellbound. A thousand men and women, hanging from the galleries, focused their eyes on him. Old Stoneman drew his bristling brows down, watching him like an adder ready to strike, his lower lip protruding, his jaws clinched as a vise, his hands fumbling the arms of his chair.

  Every breath is held, every ear strained, as the answer falls from the sturdy Scotchman like the peal of a trumpet:

  “Not Guilty!”

  The crowd breathes—a pause, a murmur, the shuffle of a thousand feet——

  The President is acquitted, and the Republic lives!

  The House assembled and received the report of the verdict. Old Stoneman pulled himself half erect, holding to his desk, addressed the Speaker, introduced his second bill for the impeachment of the President, and fell fainting in the arms of his black attendants.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XII

  Triumph in Defeat

  Upon the failure to convict the President, Edwin M. Stanton resigned, sank into despair and died, and a soldier Secretary of War opened the prison doors.

  Ben Cameron and his father hurried Southward to a home and land passing under a cloud darker than the dust and smoke of blood-soaked battlefields—the Black Plague of Reconstruction.

  For two weeks the old Commoner wrestled in silence with Death. When at last he spoke, it was to the stalwart negroes who had called to see him and were standing by his bedside.

  Turning his deep-sunken eyes on them a moment, he said slowly:

  “I wonder whom I’ll get to carry me when you boys die!”

  Elsie hurried to his side and kissed him tenderly. For a week his mind hovered in the twilight that lies between time and eternity. He seemed to forget the passions and fury of his fierce career and live over the memories of his youth, recalling pathetically its bitter poverty and its fair dreams. He would lie for hours and hold Elsie’s hand, pressing it gently.

  In one of his lucid moments he said:

  “How beautiful you are, my child! You shall be a queen. I’ve dreamed of boundless wealth for you and my boy. My plans are Napoleonic—and I shall not fail—never fear—aye, beyond the dreams of avarice!”

  “I wish no wealth save the heart treasure of those I love, father,” was the soft answer.

  “Of course, little day-dreamer. But the old cynic who has outlived himself and knows the mockery of time and things will be wisdom for your foolishness. You shall keep your toys. What pleases you shall please me. Yet I will be wise for us both.”

  She laid her hand upon his lips, and he kissed the warm little fingers.

  In these days of soul-nearness the iron heart softened as never before in love toward his children. Phil had hurried home from the West and secured his release from the remaining weeks of his term of service.

  As the father lay watching them move about the room, the cold light in his deep-set wonderful eyes would melt into a soft glow.

  As he grew stronger, the old fierce spirit of the unconquered leader began to assert itself. He would take up the fight where he left it off and carry it to victory.

  Elsie and Phil sent the doctor to tell him the truth and beg him to quit politics.

  “Your work is done; you have but three months to live unless you go South and find new life,” was the verdict.

  “In either event I go to a warmer climate, eh, doctor?” said the cynic.

  “Perhaps,” was the laughing reply.

  “Good. It suits me better. I’ve had the move in mind. I can do more effective work in the South for the next two years. Your decision is fate. I’ll go at once.”

  The doctor was taken aback.

  “Come now,” he said persuasively. “Let a disinterested Englishman give you some advice. You’ve never taken any before. I give it as medicine, and I won’t put it on your bill. Slow down on politics. Your recent defeat should teach you a lesson in conservatism.”

  The old Commoner’s powerful mouth became rigid, and the lower lip bulged:

  “Conservatism—fossil putrefaction!”

  “But defeat?”

  “Defeat?” cried the old man. “Who said I was defeated? The South lies in ashes at my feet—the very names of her proud States blotted from history. The Supreme Court awaits my nod. True, there’s a man boarding in the White House, and I vote to pay his bills; but the page who answers my beck and call has more power. Every measure on which I’ve set my heart is law, save one—my Confiscation Act—and this but waits the fulness of time.”

  The doctor, who was walking back and forth with his hands folded behind him, paused and said:

  “I marvel that a man of your personal integrity could conceive such a measure; you, who refused to accept the legal release of your debts until the last farthing was paid—you, whose cruelty of the lip is hideous, and yet beneath it so gentle a personality, I’ve seen the pages in the House stand at your back and mimic you while speaking, secure in the smile with which you turned to greet their fun. And yet you press this crime upon a brave and generous foe?”

  “A wrong can have no rights,” said Stoneman calmly. “Slavery will not be dead until the landed aristocracy on which it rested is destroyed. I am not cruel or unjust. I am but fulfilling the largest vision of universal democracy that ever stirred the soul of man—a democracy that shall know neither rich nor poor, bond nor free, white nor black. If I use the wild pulse-beat of the rage of millions, it is only a means to an end—this grander vision of the soul.”

  “Then why not begin at home this vision, and give the stricken South a moment to rise?”

  “No. The North is impervious to change, rich, proud, and unscathed by war. The South is in chaos and cannot resist. It is but the justice and wisdom of Heaven that the negro shall rule the land of his bondage. It is the only solution of the race problem. Lincoln’s contention that we could not live half white and half black is sound at the core. When we proclaim equality, social, political, and economic for the negro, we mean always to enforce it in the South. The negro will never be treated as an equal in the North. We are simply a set of cold-blooded liars on that subject, and always have been. To the Yankee the very physical touch of a negro is pollution.”

  “Then you don’t believe this twaddle about equality?” asked the doctor.

  “Yes and no. Mankind in the large is a herd of mercenary gudgeons or fools. As a lawyer in Pennsylvania I have defended fifty murderers on trial for their lives. Forty-nine of them were guilty. All these I succeeded in acquitting. One of them was innocent. This one they hung. Can a man keep his face straight in such a world? Could negro blood degr
ade such stock? Might not an ape improve it? I preach equality as a poet and seer who sees a vision beyond the rim of the horizon of to-day.”

  The old man’s eyes shone with the set stare of a fanatic.

  “And you think the South is ready for this wild vision?”

  “Not ready, but helpless to resist. As a cold-blooded, scientific experiment, I mean to give the Black Man one turn at the Wheel of Life. It is an act of just retribution. Besides, in my plans I need his vote; and that settles it.”

  “But will your plans work? Your own reports show serious trouble in the South already.”

  Stoneman laughed.

  “I never read my own reports. They are printed in molasses to catch flies. The Southern legislatures played into my hands by copying the laws of New England relating to Servants, Masters, Apprentices, and Vagrants. But even these were repealed at the first breath of criticism. Neither the Freedman’s Bureau nor the army has ever loosed its grip on the throat of the South for a moment. These disturbances and ‘atrocities’ are dangerous only when printed on campaign fly-paper.”

  “And how will you master and control these ten great Southern States?”

  “Through my Reconstruction Acts by means of the Union League. As a secret between us, I am the soul of this order. I organized it in 1863 to secure my plan of confiscation. We pressed it on Lincoln. He repudiated it. We nominated Frémont at Cleveland against Lincoln in ’64, and tried to split the party or force Lincoln to retire. Frémont, a conceited ass, went back on this plank in our platform, and we dropped him and helped elect Lincoln again.”

  “I thought the Union League a patriotic and social organization?” said the doctor in surprise.

  “It has these features, but its sole aim as a secret order is to confiscate the property of the South. I will perfect this mighty organization until every negro stands drilled in serried line beneath its banners, send a solid delegation here to do my bidding, and return at the end of two years with a majority so overwhelming that my word will be law. I will pass my Confiscation Bill. If Ulysses S. Grant, the coming idol, falters, my second bill of Impeachment will only need the change of a name.”