Part 10

We sang until ten o’clock; then apples, nuts, and cakes were brought in, and sometimes sweet cider. An hour later we had the house to ourselves, and knelt for evening prayers about the fire before going to bed.

It was an easy-going existence, that of the well-to-do Virginia countryman of that date. If there were already elements at work below the surface that were to heave the fair level into smoking ruin, the rank and file of the men who made, and who obeyed the laws, did not suspect it.

Grumblers there were, and political debates that ran high and hot, but the Commonwealth that had supplied the United States with statesmen and leaders since the Constitution was framed, had no fear of a dissolution of what was, to the apprehension of those now at the helm, the natural order of things.

XII

ELECTION DAY AND A DEMOCRATIC BARBECUE

THE time of the singing of birds and the departure of winter came suddenly that year. Hyacinths were aglow in my mother’s front yard early in February, and the orchards were aflame with “the fiery blossoms of the peach.” The earth awoke from sleep with a bound, and human creatures thrilled, as at the presage of great events.

It was the year of the presidential election and a campaign of extraordinary importance. My father talked to me of what invested it with this importance as we walked together down the street one morning when the smell of open flowers and budding foliage was sweet in our nostrils.

A Democratic barbecue was to be held in a field on the outskirts of the village just beyond “Jordan’s Creek.” The stream took its name from the man whose plantation bounded it on the west. The widening and deepening into a pool at the foot of his garden made it memorable in the Baptist Church.

I do not believe there was a negro communicant in any other denomination throughout the length of the county. And their favorite baptizing-place was “Jordan’s Creek.” I never knew why, until my mother’s maid—a bright mulatto, with a smart cross of Indian blood in her veins—“got through,” after mighty strivings on her part, and on the part of the faithful of her own class and complexion, and confided to me her complacency in the thought that she was now safe for time and eternity.

“For, you see, John the Babtis’, he babtized in the River Jerdan, and Brother Watkins, he babtized me in the Creek Jerdan. I s’pose they must be some kin to one another?”

My father laughed and then sighed over the story, when I told it as we set out on our walk. The religious beliefs and superstitions of the colored servants were respected by their owners to a degree those who know little of the system as it prevailed at that time, find it hard to believe. From babyhood we were taught never to speak disrespectfully of the Baptists, or of the vagaries that passed with the negroes for revealed truth. They had a right to their creeds as truly as we had to ours.

This younger generation is also incredulous with respect to another fact connected with our domestic relations. Children were trained in respectful speech to elderly servants—indeed, to all who were grown men and women. My mother made me apologize once to this same maid—Mary Anne by name—for telling her to “Hush her mouth!” the old Virginian form of “Hold your tongue!”

The blesséd woman explained the cause of her reproof when the maid was out of hearing:

“The expression is unladylike and coarse. Then, again, it is _mean_—despicably mean!—to be saucy to one who has no right to answer in the same way. If you must be sharp in your talk, quarrel with your equals, not with servants, who cannot meet you on your own ground.”

The admonition has stuck fast in my mind to this day.

By the time we turned the corner in the direction of Jordan’s Creek, my father and I were deep in politics. He was the stanchest of Whigs, and the ancient and honorable party had for leader, in this year’s fight, one whom my instructor held to be the wisest statesman and purest patriot in the land. The ticket, “Clay and Frelinghuysen,” was a beloved household word with us; talk of the tariff, protection and the national debt, which Henry Clay’s policy would wipe out, and forever, if opportunity were granted to him, ran as glibly from our childish tongues as dissertations upon the Catholic bill and parliamentary action thereupon dropped from the lips of the Brontë boy and girls. There was not a shadow of doubt in our minds as to the result of the November fight.

“It seems a pity”—I observed, as we looked across the creek down into the distant meadow, where men and boys were moving to and fro, and smoke was rising from fires that had been kindled overnight—“that the Democrats should go to so much expense and trouble only to be defeated at last.”

“They may not be so sure as you are that they are working for nothing,” answered my father, smiling good-humoredly. “They have had some victories to boast of in the past.”

“Yes!” I assented, reluctantly. “As, for instance, when Colonel Hopkins was sent to the Legislature! Father, I wish you had agreed to go when they begged you to let them elect you!”

The smile was now a laugh.

“To nominate me, you mean. A very different matter from election, my daughter. Not that I cared for either. If I may be instrumental in the hands of Providence in helping to put the right man into the right place, my political ambitions will be satisfied.”

“I do hope that Powhatan will go for Clay!” ejaculated I, fervently. “And I think it an outrage that the Richmond voters cannot come up to the help of the right, at the presidential election.”

“The law holds that the real strength of the several states would not be properly represented if this were allowed,” was the reply.

I saw the justice of the law later in life. Then it was oppressive, to my imagination.

That most doubtful blessing of enlightened freemen—universal suffrage—had not as yet been thrust upon the voters of the United States. In Virginia, the man who held the franchise must not only be “free, white, and twenty-one,” but he must be a land-owner to the amount of at least twenty-five dollars. Any free white of the masculine gender owning twenty-five dollars’ worth of real estate in any county had a vote there. If he owned lands of like value in ten counties, he might deposit a vote in each of them, if he could reach them all between sunrise and sunset on Election Day. It was esteemed a duty by the Richmond voter—the city being overwhelmingly Whig—to distribute his influence among doubtful counties in which he was a property-holder. He held and believed for certain that he had a right to protect his interests wherever they might lie.

Powhatan was a doubtful factor in the addition of election returns. Witness the election to the Legislature at different periods of such Democrats as Major Jacob Michaux—from a James River plantation held by his grandfather by a royal grant since the Huguenots sought refuge in Virginia from French persecutors—and of the Colonel Hopkins whom I had named. This last was personally popular, a man of pleasing address and fair oratorical powers, and represented an influential neighborhood in the centre of the county. A most worthy gentleman, as I now know. Then I classed him with Jesuits and tyrants. I had overheard a sanguine Democrat declare in the heat of political argument that “Henry L. Hopkins would be President of the United States some day.” To which my father retorted, “When that day comes I shall cross the ocean and swear allegiance to Queen Victoria.”

When I repeated the direful threat to my mother, she laughed and bade me give myself no uneasiness on the subject, as nothing was more unlikely than that Colonel Hopkins would ever go to the White House. Nevertheless, I always associated that amiable and courtly gentleman with our probable expatriation.

Election Day was ever an event of moment with us children. From the time when I was tall enough to peep over the vine-draped garden-fence—until I was reckoned too big to stand and stare in so public a place, and was allowed to join the seniors who watched the street from behind the blinds and between the sprays of the climbing roses shading the front windows—it was my delight to inspect and pronounce upon the groups that filled the highway all day long. Children are violent partisans, and we separated the sheep from the goats—_id est_, the Whigs from the Democrats—as soon as the horsemen became visible through the floating yellow dust of the roads running from each end of the street back into the country. One neighborhood in the lower end of the county, bordering upon Chesterfield, was familiarly known as the “Yellow Jacket region.” It took its name, according to popular belief, from the butternut and nankeen stuffs that were worn by men and women. The term had a sinister meaning to us, although it was sufficiently explained by the costume of the voters, who seldom appeared at the Court House in force except upon Election Day. They arrived early in the forenoon—a straggling procession of sad-faced citizens, or so we fancied—saying little to one another, and looking neither to the left nor the right as their sorrel nags paced up the middle of the wide, irregularly built street. I did not understand then, nor do I now, their preference for sorrel horses. Certain it is that there were four of that depressing hue to one black, bay, or gray. So badly groomed were the poor beasts, and so baggy were the nankeen trousers of the men who bestrode them, that a second look was needed to determine where the rider ended and the steed began. We noted, with disdainful glee, that the Yellow Jacket folk turned the corner of the crossway flanking our garden, and so around the back of the public square enclosing Court House, clerk’s office, and jail. There they tethered the sorry beasts to the fence, shook down a peck or so of oats from bags they had fastened behind their saddles, and shambled into the square to be lost in the gathering crowd.

As they rode through the village, ill-mannered boys chanted:

“Democrats— They eat rats! But Whigs Eat pigs!”

Bacon being a product for which the state was famed, the distinction was invidious to the last degree. My mother never let us take up the scandalous doggerel. She said it was vulgar, untrue, and unkind. It was not her fault that each of us had the private belief that there was a spice of truth in it.

When we saw a smart tilbury, drawn by a pair of glossy horses, stop before the “Bell Tavern” opposite our house, the occupants spring to the ground and leave the equipage to the hostlers—who rushed from the stables at sound of the clanging bell pulled by the landlord as soon as he caught sight of the carriage—we said in unison:

“They are Whigs!”

We were as positive as to the politics of the men who rode blooded hunters and wore broadcloth and tall, shining hats. The Yellow Jacket head-gear was drab in color, uncertain in shape.

It seemed monstrous to our intolerant youth that “poor white folksy” men should have an equal right with gentlemen, born and bred, in deciding who should represent the county in the Legislature and the district in Congress.

The crowning excitement of the occasion was reserved for the afternoon. As early as three o’clock I was used to see my father come out of the door of his counting-room over the way, watch in hand, and look down the Richmond road. Presently he would be joined there by one, two, or three others, and they compared timepieces, looking up at the westering sun, their faces graver and gestures more energetic as the minutes sped by. The junta of women sympathizers behind the vine-curtains began to speculate as to the possibility of accident to man, beast, or carriage, and we children inquired, anxiously, “What would happen if the Richmond voters did not come, after all?”

“No fear of that!” we were assured, our mother adding, with modest pride, “Your father has attended to the matter.”

They always came. Generally the cloud of distant dust, looming high and fast upon the wooded horizon, was the first signal of the reinforcements for the Whig party. Through this we soon made out a train of ten or twelve carriages, and perhaps as many horsemen—a triumphal cortége that rolled and caracoled up the street amid the cheers of expectant fellow-voters and of impartial urchins, glad of any chance to hurrah for anybody. The most important figure to me in the scene was my father, as with feigned composure he walked slowly to the head of the front steps, and lifted his hat in courteous acknowledgment of the hands and hats waved to him from carriage and saddle-bow. If I thought of Alexander, Napoleon, and Washington, I am not ashamed to recollect it now.

That child has been defrauded who has not had a hero in his own home.

I was at no loss to know who mine was, on this bland spring morning, as my father and I leaned on a fence on the hither side of the creek and watched the proceedings of the cooks and managers about the _al fresco_ kitchen.

“Too many cooks spoil the dinner!” quoth I, as negroes bustled from fire to fire, and white men yelled their orders and counter-orders. “Not that it matters much what kind of victuals are served at a Democratic barbecue, so long as there is plenty to drink.”

“Easy, easy, daughter!” smiled my auditor. “There are good men and true in the other party. We are in danger of forgetting that.”

“None as good and great as Mr. Clay, father?”

He raised his hat slightly and involuntarily. “I do not think he has his equal as man and pure patriot in this, or any other country. God defend the right!”

“You are not afraid lest _Polk_”—drawling the monosyllable in derision—“will beat him, father?”

The smile was a laugh—happily confident.

“Hardly! I have more faith in human nature and in the common-sense of the American people than to think that they will pass over glorious Harry of the West, and forget his distinguished services to the nation, to set in the presidential chair an obscure demagogue who has done nothing. Wouldn’t you like to go down there and see half an ox roasted, and a whole sheep?”

We crossed the stream upon a shaking plank laid from bank to bank, and strolled down the slope to the scene of operations. An immense kettle was swung over a fire of logs that were so many living coals. The smell of Brunswick stew had been wafted to us while we leaned on the fence. A young man, who had the reputation of being an epicure, to the best of his knowledge and ability, superintended the manufacture of the famous delicacy.

“Two dozen chickens went into it!” he assured us. “They wanted to make me think it couldn’t be made without green corn and fresh tomatoes. I knew a trick worth two of that. I have worked it before with dried tomatoes and dried sweet corn soaked overnight.”

He smacked his lips and winked fatuously.

“I’ve great confidence in your culinary skill,” was the good-natured rejoinder.

I recollected that I had heard my father say of this very youth:

“I am never hard upon a fellow who is a fool because he can’t help it!” But I wondered at his gentleness when the epicure prattled on:

“Yes, sir! a stew like this is fit for Democrats to eat. I wouldn’t give a Whig so much as a smell of the pot!”

“You ought to have a tighter lid, then,” with the same good-humored intonation, and we passed on to see the roasts. Shallow pits, six or seven feet long and four feet wide, were half filled with clear coals of hard hickory billets. Iron bars were laid across these, gridiron-like, and half-bullocks and whole sheep were cooking over the scarlet embers. There were six pits, each with its roast. The spot for the speakers’ rostrum and the seats of the audience was well-selected. A deep spring welled up in a grove of maples. The fallen red blossoms carpeted the ground, and the young leaves supplied grateful shade. The meadows sloped gradually toward the spring; rude benches of what we called “puncheon logs”—that is, the trunks of trees hewed in half, and the flat sides laid uppermost—were ranged in the form of an amphitheatre.

“You have a fine day for the meeting,” observed my father to the master of ceremonies, a planter from the Genito neighborhood, who greeted the visitors cordially.

“Yes, sir! The Lord is on our side, and no mistake!” returned the other, emphatically. “Don’t you see that yourself, Mr. Hawes!”

“I should not venture to base my faith upon the weather,” his eyes twinkling while he affected gravity, “for we read that He sends His rain and sunshine upon the evil and the good. Good-morning! I hope the affair will be as pleasant as the day.”

Our father took his family into confidence more freely than any other man I ever knew. We were taught not to prattle to outsiders of what was said and done at home. At ten years of age I was used to hearing affairs of personal and business moment canvassed by my parents and my father’s partner, who had been an inmate of our house from his eighteenth year—intensely interested to the utmost of my comprehension and drawing my own conclusions privately, yet understanding all the while that whatever I heard and thought was not to be spoken of to schoolmate or visitor.

It was not unusual for my father to confide to me in our early morning rides—for he was my riding-master—some scheme he was considering pertaining to church, school, or purchase, talking of it as to an equal in age and intelligence. I hearkened eagerly, and was flattered and honored by the distinction thus conferred. He never charged me not to divulge what was committed to me. Once or twice he had added, “I know I am safe in telling you this.” After which the thumb-screw could not have extracted a syllable of the communication from me.

It was during one of these morning rides that he unfolded a plan suggested, as he told me, by our visit to the Democratic barbecue-ground some weeks before.

We had to rise betimes to secure a ride of tolerable length before the warmth of the spring and summer days made the exercise fatiguing and unpleasant. A glass of milk and a biscuit were brought to me while I was dressing in the gray dawn, and I would join my escort at the front gate, where stood the hostler with both horses, while the east was yet but faintly colored by the unseen sun.

We were pacing quietly along a plantation road five miles from the Court House, and I was dreamily enjoying the fresh taste of the dew-laden air upon my lips, and inhaling the scent of the wild thyme and sheep-mint, bruised by the horses’ hoofs, when my companion, who, I had seen, had been in a brown study for the last mile, began with:

“I have been thinking—” The sure prelude to something worth hearing, or so I believed then.

A Whig rally was meditated. He had consulted with three of his friends as to the scheme born of his brain, and there would be a meeting of perhaps a dozen leading men of the party in his counting-room that afternoon. The affair was not to be spoken of until date and details were settled. My heart swelled with pride in him, and in myself as his chosen confidante, as he went on. The recollection of the scenes succeeding the barbecue was fresh in our minds, and the memory sharpened the contrast between the methods of the rival parties.

I was brimful of excitement when I got home, and the various novelties of the impending event in the history of county politics and village life were the staple of neighborhood talk for the weeks dividing that morning ride from the mid-May day of the “rally.”

That was what they called it, for it was not to be a barbecue, although a collation would be served in the grounds surrounding the Grove Hotel, situated in the centre of the hamlet, and separated from the public square by one street. The meeting and the speaking would be in the grove at the rear of the Court House. Seats were to be arranged among the trees. It was at my father’s instance and his expense that the benches would be covered with white cotton cloth—“muslin,” in Northern parlance. This was in special compliment to the “ladies who, it was hoped, would compose a great part of the audience.”

This was the chiefest innovation of all that set tongues to wagging in three counties. The wives and mothers and daughters of voters were cordially invited by placards strewed broadcast through the length and breadth of Powhatan. The like had never been heard of within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. It was universally felt that the step practically guaranteed the county for Clay and Frelinghuysen.

XIII

A WHIG RALLY AND MUSTER DAY

THE day dawned heavenly fair, and waxed gloriously bright by the time the preparations for the reception of the guests were completed. The dust had been laid by an all-day rain forty-eight hours before. Every blade of grass and the leaves, which rustled joyously overhead, shone as if newly varnished. At ten o’clock all the sitting-space was occupied, three-fourths of the assembly being of the fairer sex. Half an hour later there was not standing-room within the sound of the orators’ voices. A better-dressed, better-mannered crowd never graced a political “occasion.” All were in summer gala attire, and all were seated without confusion. My father, as chairman of the committee of arrangements, had provided for every stage of the proceeding. It was by a motion, made by him and carried by acclamation, that Captain Miller, “a citizen of credit and renown,” was called to preside.

As if it had happened last week, I can, in fancy, see each feature of this, the most stupendous function that had ever entered my young life. I suppose there may have been five hundred people present. I would have said, unhesitatingly, “five thousand,” if asked to make the computation. I wore, for the first time, a sheer lawn frock—the longest I had ever had, but, as my mother explained to the village dressmaker—Miss Judy Cardozo—“Virginia is growing so fast, we would better have it rather long to begin with.” I secretly rejoiced in the sweep of the full skirt down to my heels, as giving me a young-ladylike appearance. “Thad” Ivey, always kind to me, and not less jolly because he was soon to be a married man, meeting me on the way up the street, declared that I had “really a ball-room air.” My hair was “done” in two braids and tied with white ribbon figured with pale-purple and green flowers. Sprigs of the same color decorated the white ground of my lawn. I carried a white fan, and I sat, with great delight, between my mother and Cousin Mary.

“‘And bright The _sun_ shone o’er fair women and brave men,’”

murmured a gallant Whig to the row of women behind us.

“Isn’t that strange!” whispered I to Cousin Mary; “those lines have been running in my mind ever since we came.”

Not strange, as I now know. Everybody read and quoted “Childe Harold” at that period, and I may add, took liberties with the text of favorite poems to suit them to the occasion.

When the round of applause that greeted the appearance of Captain Miller upon the platform subsided, everything grew suddenly so still that I heard the leaves rustling over our heads. His was not an imposing presence, but he had a stainless reputation as a legislator and a Whig, and was highly respected as a man. He began in exactly these words:

“Ladies and gentlemen—fellow-citizens, all!—it behooves us, always and everywhere, before entering upon the prosecution of any important enterprise, to invoke the presence and blessing of Almighty God. We will, therefore, be now led in prayer by the Reverend Mr. Carus.”