It was long after daybreak when the police relaxed their vigilance in guarding the Negro district. There were still smouldering flames in the small area which had been burned. Despite the fact that all seemed quiet and as if nothing had occurred, those of the colored population who usually were astir before this hour and on their way to their places of work refused to leave their homes.
In the downtown section, not a Negro could be seen and the whites began to awake to the awfulness of the situation. Like a bad conscience on the morning after there was feeling of remorse in some. Most of those who had taken part in the mob, however, and their friends began to visit the scene of their diabolical outbreak. There was no remorse in them, however. They were prompted by sheer curiosity. The newspapers carried stories of the night's work but not the whole story. There was no mention of Dr. Tansey or Professor Armstrong. The parts they played came out later.
For the most part the crowd gathered on the sidewalk, leaned against the railing and gazed at the swaying bodies and the two lying on the grass—the one that of Dr. Tansey, the other that of Professor Armstrong. They believed that all four bodies must have been those of Negroes.
"I thought we lynched only two niggers," remarked one to a bystander.
"So did I. There are four bodies, though."
"I only remember two," said a third.
One spirit, bolder than the others, now that the sun was shining, started for the gate. "I want a piece of that rope for a remembrance. I'll show it to the next one of them that gets fresh with me."
"So do I.—So do I.—Me too," various others repeated as they followed the leader into the yard preparing to cut ends from the dangling ropes. They had each secured a piece of the rope and started for the gate again when, as they were passing the body of Professor Armstrong, the latter regained consciousness, opened his eyes, turned over and started to rise. With a yell of fear the four souvenir hunters tossed their bits of rope into the air and ran.
Professor Armstrong staggered to his feet, looked wildly at the retreating four as they broke through the crowd, then cursed them.
"Cowards—brutes that you are. Run, you curs who call yourselves men—white men at that. Behold your work, and but for Providence I might have been one of them, pointing to the general direction of the three bodies. You don't know what you've done. Killed three innocent persons, one of them white, just to please your greed for blood.
"Behold your work, you beasts. You've killed a white man.—A real man—as well as two absolutely innocent human beings. God will curse this town for this as He will curse this whole land unless you change."
With that he strode toward the gate. The crowd, in awe, stood aside to allow a path through which he walked. Professor Armstrong crossed the street, haggard and hollow-eyed from his experiences, and made for his hotel.
"There's a white man's body over there in that yard," he said to the clerk at the desk, pointing to the courthouse. "A white man killed by that mob last night. Get the body to some undertaking place."
Orangeburg awoke in a remorseful mood. When the better families, whose domestics had been frightened into hiding during the night while the rioting was at its height, failed to show up for work the first realization of what had happened came to them. When their morning paper recounted the wild happenings of the night before and the barbarity of the scenes they came to a greater realization. When, however, an extra edition was cried into their faces, announcing that one white man had been accidentally killed by the mob, his body trampled on and mangled, the horror of the affair sank into their souls.
It was well toward noon before the bodies were cut down and removed from the courtyard. Not until after Judge Gauvin had come to hold court and viewed the remains. When he stood at the gate, about to enter, with the crowd of morbid spectators gaping at the still swaying bodies, he realized that the man and woman were innocent also that he knew in his heart where the guilt lay, he hung his head, after ordering the bodies removed.
His self control was so shaken by the gruesomeness of the sight that he had recourse to his closet for stimulant, which he always kept on hand. The body of Dr. Tansey had been borne away early in the morning, soon after Professor Armstrong had notified the clerk. All day, however, there was a continual crowd passing and repassing the spot, souvenir hunting, or just morbidly curious. The bodies of the Negroes were turned over to relatives who prepared them for burial. As if in remorse, some of the white families sympathetically offered the stricken ones aid in their bereavement. But for the remainder of the city business proceeded as if nothing unusual had occurred. Trafford was hurried out of town by his family when it became noised about that he had been the indirect cause of the tragedy.
Rev. Father Winsor Buntin in his little country parish, as he read the story recalled the meeting with Dr. Tansey in Charleston. His heart was heavy. He bowed his head in meditation sitting in front of the little mission that had been his home as well as the center of his work.
As he pictured the scene, he murmured, tears filling his eyes: "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. How can men be so cruel," he thought. "So brutal! I must hurry into town. He was a stranger in a strange land. I'll pray for the repose of his soul."
Arriving at Orangeburg, Father Buntin hurried to the hotel and from there learned of the plans for the funeral. Learning from Professor Armstrong that the body was to be shipped North after a few simple exercises, he requested that he be allowed to conduct the services.
"Gladly, Father. I was wondering whom I could get to conduct the services."
Professor Armstrong's legs were still shaky from his experiences and the shock of them. His hair had turned white almost over night. His eyes were haggard and hollow.
"I don't know whether I can stand the shock of the services yet or not, Father. I am still weak."
"Yes, I know.—I'm glad you were spared, my son. I hope this will soon stop and the country get back to normal."
Louise Comstock passed them by, heavily veiled. She had not been able to get away from the town with the girl she was protecting before the tragedy swooped down on them. As she passed them, Professor Armstrong stepped to her and touched her lightly on the arm.
"I have a clergyman who will conduct the services, Miss Comstock."
"I'm so glad—so glad!"
She bowed as Professor Armstrong nodded in the direction of the clergyman. "What a terrible affair! What a cruel land!" She began to weep as she spoke. Professor Armstrong and Father Buntin consoled and comforted her.
"As soon as plans can be made after the funeral, I shall take the girl and the body North. I have wired his people," she said when she had recovered. "I also notified them of the accidental death and stated that the body was coming home. What a horror!"
Louise's eyes again began to fill. She hastily passed inside the hotel. Professor Armstrong returned to the clergyman. The following day the little chapel in which the funeral of Dr. Tansey took place was crowded. Remorse was now truly gnawing at the heart of Orangeburg and there came to the chapel men and women who would never otherwise have given such an event a thought.
There was no music for the ceremony. Light from the sun stole through the crevices between the shutters which darkened the room. Fr. Buntin was just about to begin the funeral services when from the yard adjoining the chapel there sounded in the ears of the audience the voice of a Negro domestic singing one of the Spirituals. Every heart seemed to cease beating. No one scarcely breathed. The voice was melodic, tender, and minor in tone, as if sensing that death was in the room and tragedy in the heart. The words seemed to glide from the lips as the rich sweet-toned soprano voice sang:
Steal away—Oh, steal away home,
For I have not long to stay here.
My Lord calls me. He calls me by the thunder.
The trumpet sounds it in my soul—
I have not long to stay here.
Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus.
Steal away—Oh, steal away home,
For I have not long to stay here.
Instinctively as the voice died away into silence every head in the audience drooped to the breast. Not an eye but filled with tears and not a heart but swelled with pain of sorrow and grief.
"Let us pray," said Father Buntin. "Oh, God," he said, "In the midst of life we are in death, as thou knowest. In the midst of darkness we are in light; in the midst of the false we are in truth. Teach us by this death to know life; to know light and to know truth. Men blinded by passion, ignorance and filled with hatred are incapable of seeing thy light, thy life and thy truth. Forgive those at whose hands one of thine own image has been sent to thy bar. May they learn to regret their actions and turn from those ways by which they have broken thy commandment, Thou shalt not kill' Teach them thy way, which is the right way, Oh, God. Teach them that men are men, created by you, endowed with thy spirit and that since they gave no life they must not be guilty of taking life. Grant this, Oh God, and lead us into better ways where we may always stand for thy glory till life is everlasting. Amen."
As the prayer ended again there stole through the latticed windows the lone voice singing:
Swing low sweet chariot, coming to carry me home.
I look over yonder what do I see,
Coming to carry me home,
A band of angels coming after me,
Coming to carry me home.
Swing low sweet chariot, coming to carry me home;
Swing low sweet chariot, coming to carry me home.
As the song ended, Father Buntin arose and stepped to the head of the coffin. "My friends," he said. "This is a very sad task. Sadder than most of us realize. To be taken off in the prime of life before completing the things we have set out to do, is unfortunate. Far more unfortunate, however, is it to be sent to an untimely death as this man has been sent.
"His was a noble heart.—A heart well placed—a Godly heart. I had the opportunity of knowing him a few short weeks ago under circumstances that stamped him as one of God's few in these days of moral cowards. Had he lived he would have been a power for good. Perhaps, however, his death may serve the end for which God intended his life. This death and that of two other beings killed by mob fury ought to serve to point the way toward which we are fast heading unless we call a halt. Anarchy and ruin are just over the fence.
"I warn you, one and all. Let this death be a lesson to you. You have long been playing with a torch and it is a wonder that you have not set the entire country on fire from it. Once started there is no telling where it will end. Think, friends, members of this parish as well as members of the whole South. I wish my voice could carry into every hamlet in this wide land. The Ku Klux is raging and lawlessness reigns rampant. This is the most lawless country in the world with more than eight thousand homicides in every year, recorded. God knows how many are unrecorded.
"Think, men and women. Think. Thought is law and law is thought in control. When we think we cease to be beasts. And all are forced to admit that we have been beasts. Think what an example of brute force we set for those about us. We have the law in our hands. We have the constabulary, the courts and all the machinery of civilization in our hands. What is there to fear that we must always resort to force? We are supreme. Cannot we set the example by Christian living, by Christian law and Christlike judgments. What can we expect but brute force from a lowly people when we are the greatest, most inhuman, brutes of all.
"We ruin their women at will. We flog and kill them at will. Picture the scene a few days ago when a poor wretch, who has now been proven to be innocent was strung up and disemboweled by a mob gone insane as the mob went insane that slew the victim lying before us. Think of human beings, members of a civilized race clamoring and fighting with one another, men, women and children, for strands of rope by which poor innocent souls have gone to death at our hands. Who is the brute, I ask? Who is the brute? What must be the feelings of those of their race who look on from behind walls of fear and trembling and see a supposedly civilized Christian people become such beasts.
"Until our civilization turns back to God and realizes that there is no expediency, no honor, no excuse in or for racial hatred, injustice and the rule of might, we shall never have a real civilization and we shall still be living example to all the remainder of the world, of hypocrisy, farce and sophistry. We are all hiding behind a color cloud. Behind a theory, that might makes right, and justice—is what we choose to make it!
"Come out, Oh, America! Come out, Oh Land of the South! In any great human cause some blood must be shed to impress the people with the seriousness and the righteousness of the cause. Therefore the death of this honorable, noble man, if it serve the proper purpose will awaken us to a greater consciousness of the evil we have reared in our midst; to quicken our consciences to the dangers that surround us; this death has come to show us the will of God, to point the way to better living for us all.
"We owe these people a duty we have never thought of paying. We owe ourselves a protection from the menace of anarchy and ruin. Far better it would have been if, after the war of secession we had turned our efforts to making them into good citizens rather than to have tried so hard to enslave them again. We have never done right by them and it is not to their discredit that they have come so far and done so well under the circumstances. Rather has it been to the great discredit of the South that we have sought to keep a people virtual slaves when the God of the Universe had ordained it otherwise. We have not played the game fairly. It is time that we should.
"How much better it would be if we had set ourselves to the task of educating this people into the ways of civilization; if we had started and kept going, schools for their education, settlement houses for turning them into better citizens, and teaching them the laws of health and clean living. We have cast aside, because of a blind prejudice, a vastly potential force that if directed properly would have made this, our South blossom as a garden of paradise.
"It is time we turned about in our ways. It is time we considered these matters in relation to our own existence. We have been possessed of a blinding madness. If by the death of this noble man we are taught to see the light, and our conscience can be awakened, then I say, God be praised. Amen!"