d town
governments. Every school, college, hospital, asylum, and poorhouse is his
prey. What you have seen is but a sample. Negro insolence grows beyond
endurance. Their women are taught to insult their old mistresses and mock
their poverty as they pass in their old, faded dresses. Yesterday a black
driver struck a white child of six with his whip, and when the mother
protested, she was arrested by a negro policeman, taken before a negro
magistrate, and fined $10 for 'insulting a freedman.'"

Stoneman frowned: "Such things must be very exceptional."

"They are everyday occurrences and cease to excite comment. Lynch, the
Lieutenant-Governor, who has bought a summer home here, is urging this
campaign of insult with deliberate purpose----"

The old man shook his head. "I can't think the Lieutenant-Governor guilty
of such petty villainy."

"Our school commissioner," the doctor continued, "is a negro who can
neither read nor write. The black grand jury last week discharged a negro
for stealing cattle and indicted the owner for false imprisonment. No such
rate of taxation was ever imposed on a civilized people. A tithe of it
cost Great Britain her colonies. There are 5,000 homes in this
county--2,900 of them are advertised for sale by the sheriff to meet his
tax bills. This house will be sold next court day----"

Stoneman looked up sharply. "Sold for taxes?"

"Yes; with the farm which has always been Mrs. Lenoir's support. In part
her loss came from the cotton tax. Congress, in addition to the desolation
of war, and the ruin of black rule, has wrung from the cotton farmers of
the South a tax of $67,000,000. Every dollar of this money bears the stain
of the blood of starving people. They are ready to give up, or to spring
some desperate scheme of resistance----"

The old man lifted his massive head and his great jaws came together with
a snap:

"Resistance to the authority of the National Government?"

"No; resistance to the travesty of government and the mockery of
civilization under which we are being throttled! The bayonet is now in the
hands of a brutal negro militia. The tyranny of military martinets was
child's play to this. As I answered your call this morning I was stopped
and turned back in the street by the drill of a company of negroes under
the command of a vicious scoundrel named Gus who was my former slave. He
is the captain of this company. Eighty thousand armed negro troops,
answerable to no authority