CHAPTER IV

IT

A BOY IN RECONSTRUCTION TIMES

T is said that Satan still some mischief finds for idle hands to do; and a man who has nothing to do but vote can hardly be said to be very busy. The trouble with the lately freed slaves was that they regarded voting as such an important matter that they gave their entire attention to it and did nothing else. The case of the negro women was much better, since they had no ambition to vote, as women have now, and most of them attended to their humble duties very much as they had done before.

As for the men, they found that even the task of framing laws was not nearly so difficult as obeying them, and was infinitely easier and more enjoyable than gathering cotton.

So it happened that one afternoon, in the little town of Bradleigh, in North Carolina, a number of black men were assembled at a street corner when the former overseer of a neighboring plantation drove by. Among the negroes was one who had been a slave on this plantation; and among his companions was one who was now a constable. This constable, noticing the overseer, advised his friend to step forward and demand wages for his services of the last twenty years.

There can be no question that he, like every other man, should always have received wages for his labor; but that question was now settled, slavery was at an end, and to step forward demanding a considerable sum of money at such a time and in such a place had rather the appearance of highway robbery than of a just demand.

The overseer struck the fellow with his whip, whereat the entire group of negroes fell upon him and he died that evening from the effects of the injuries he received.

When the white men undertook to arrest the negroes who had participated in this affair more assaults and two other murders were

committed. The negroes rose in a very frenzy against the planters, demanding fabulous sums for their past services and shooting or striking down those who refused to pay. It was a night of horror in the little town.

It happened that among those who witnessed these scenes was a boy of about Lucas's age, by the name of LeRoy Canby. LeRoy

knew that the nearest plantation was eleven miles distant, but he realized that the town was in the hands of the blacks, and he knew that unless some one acted, and acted quickly, this carnival of riot and murder would end in wholesale massacre.

He

Running to a near-by stable, he "requisitioned" a horse. had heard his brothers, who had worn the gray uniforms and fought

under General Lee, talk of "requisitioning" horses for the army, which appeared to mean taking them without permission because And if this were not a public need, he thought,

of the public need. then what was?

If there is one thing that a Southern boy knows how to do it is to ride a horse. Through the country LeRoy sped, like General Sheridan on his famous ride.

Hills rose and fell, but his heart was gay,

as he urged his horse on through dark woodlands, past cropless fields and demolished homesteads and deserted cabins. Suddenly he was brought to a halt by a ruined bridge which had spanned the river. He remembered well when the Union soldiers had torn down this bridge, but he had forgotten about it and in his haste had taken the wrong road.

There were no Boy Scouts of America in those days, but LeRoy was a good scout, for all of that. He had no respect for obstacles save as things to be overcome. There were no "gold crosses" and "Silver Wolf" awards for the courageous and resourceful boy then, but the good scout maxim that "where there's a will there's a way" was implanted in the mind of this little Confederate, and, snapping the halter into the bit-ring, he scrambled out upon the wreckage. The horse was at a disadvantage on the sloping bank, and was soon pulled, willy-nilly, into the water. A little more pulling in the right direction and the animal started to swim across. LeRoy plunged into the river, keeping fast hold of the halter, and soon both horse and boy clambered up the opposite bank.

On they sped through the night, LeRoy's eyes fixed upon a flickering light in the distance, which he knew to be in the house he sought.

The "stunt" which LeRoy Canby had performed, when he stood wet and panting before the door of the planter's home that night and excitedly told his errand, would have raised him out of the tenderfoot class before any local council in all this wide land in these later days of Boy Scouting. For he had done the good turn and had been resourceful (which is the Scout law in a nutshell), indomitable little rebel that he was!

In a very few minutes there emerged from the house a white

shrouded man, who lighted a great cross and held it aloft as he mounted a waiting horse.

LeRoy, half frightened in spite of himself, accompanied this sinister figure, and they rode away into the darkness together.

COSTUMES OF KU-KLUX KLAN WORN IN MISSISSIPPI AND
WEST ALABAMA

(From Lester and Wilson's "Ku-Klux Klan" through the courtesy of
Prof. W. L. Fleming, of the University of Louisiana)

They paused at a neighboring plantation, where another whiterobed figure joined them, then cantered on silently through the night, their flaming crosses held aloft. As they rode their number grew; now there were a dozen of them, then fifty, then a hundred. One of them sent LeRoy, trembling, up a hill to plant on its summit a fiery cross which could be seen for miles round about the country. At every cross-roads ghostly figures awaited them. There was

very little talking, but when one did speak to another he called him "brother." They all spoke in the same even tone of voice. This was so that each, as far as might be, should be unknown to the others.

The night was well advanced and riot and bloodshed held the little town; the victims of the infuriated blacks lay about in the street, while terror-stricken women and screaming children crouched and trembled behind locked doors, when some one pointed to a stream of light in the far distance, which seemed to be moving toward the stricken town. It was long, like a comet, and undulated as it moved over hill and through dale, winding like a fiery serpent. "The Ku-Klux! The Ku-Klux!" some one shouted.

Presently the moving stream of fire came near enough so that white figures could be seen beneath it—an endless cavalcade, winding and turning, but coming ever toward the harried town. Sometimes it disappeared in some patch of woodland, bursting forth again in lurid glare as it came nearer and nearer to the town. Then the distant patter of hoofs could be heard.

The negroes knew well enough what it all meant. It was an army of ghosts-ghosts of the planters who had been killed in the war, the spirits of those who had fallen at the hands of Grant and Sherman.

That was the many fortune-tellers' theory of the mysterious Ku-Klux, and if there were some among the blacks who knew or suspected its human character, their fear was not lessened thereby.

Now the steady patter of the horses' hoofs came nearer, nearer, and negroes who were afraid of no man stood petrified with terror or ran frantically from the scene.

Then suddenly the foremost riders of the ghostly cavalcade burst upon the town and reined their horses amid the fighting and tumult. And never did any triumph of the great war, or heroic deed of blue or gray, call forth greater plaudits than went up on that dreadful night when the invincible Ku-Klux Klan came to the rescue of the little town of Bradleigh.

It was not the fashion of the Klansmen to fight, except upon urgent need; their victims were usually disciplined or punished in secret and with awe-inspiring ceremonial.

LeRoy Canby accompanied them as they stalked from house to house, dragging forth the terrified negroes and marching them off,