FROM the hour he had watched the capture of the armory old Stoneman felt in the air a current against him which was electric, as if the dead had heard the cry of the clansmen's greeting, risen and rallied to their pale ranks.
The daring campaign these men were waging took his breath. They were going not only to defeat his delegation to Congress, but send their own to take their seats, reinforced by the enormous power of a suppressed Negro vote. The blow was so sublime in its audacity, he laughed in secret admiration while he raved and cursed.
The army corps took possession of the hill counties, quartering from five to six hundred regulars at each court-house; but the mischief was done. The state was on fire. The eighty thousand rifles with which the negroes had been armed were now in the hands of their foes. A white rifle-club was organised in every town, village, and hamlet. They attended the public meetings with their guns, drilled in front of the speakers' stands, yelled, hooted, hissed, cursed, and jeered at the orators who dared to champion or apologise for Negro rule. At night the hoof-beat of squadrons of pale horsemen and the crack of their revolvers struck terror to the heart of every negro, carpet-bagger, and scalawag.
There was a momentary lull in the excitement, which Stoneman mistook for fear, at the appearance of the troops. He had the Governor appoint a white sheriff, a young scalawag from the mountains who was a noted moonshiner and desperado. He arrested over a hundred leading men in the county, charged them with complicity in the killing of the three members of the African Guard, and instructed the judge and clerk of the court to refuse bail and commit them to jail under military guard.
To his amazement, the prisoners came into Piedmont armed and mounted. They paid no attention to the deputy sheriffs who were supposed to have them in charge. They deliberately formed in line under Ben Cameron's direction and he led them in a parade through the streets.
The five hundred United States regulars who were camped on the river bank were Westerners. Ben led his squadron of armed prisoners in front of this camp and took them through the evolutions of cavalry with the precision of veterans. The soldiers dropped their games and gathered, laughing, to watch them. The drill ended with a double-rank charge at the river embankment. When they drew every horse on his haunches on the brink, firing a volley with a single crash, a wild cheer broke from the soldiers, and the officers rushed from their tents.
Ben wheeled his men, galloped in front of the camp, drew them up at dress parade, and saluted. A low word of command from a trooper, and the Westerners quickly formed in ranks, returned the salute, and cheered. The officers rushed up, cursing, and drove the men back to their tents.
The horsemen laughed, fired a volley in the air, cheered, and galloped back to the court-house. The court was glad to get rid of them. There was no question raised over technicalities in making out bail-bonds. The clerk wrote the names of imaginary bondsmen as fast as his pen could fly, while the perspiration stood in beads on his red forehead.
Another telegram from old Stoneman to the White House, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus was suspended and Martial Law proclaimed.
Enraged beyond measure at the salute from the troops, he had two companies of negro regulars sent from Columbia, and they camped in the Court-House Square.
He determined to make a desperate effort to crush the fierce spirit before which his forces were being driven like chaff. He induced Bizzel to return from Cleveland with his negro wife and children. He was escorted to the City Hall and reinstalled as Mayor by the full force of seven hundred troops, and a negro guard placed around his house. Stoneman had Lynch run an excursion from the Black Belt, and brought a thousand negroes to attend a final rally at Piedmont. He placarded the town with posters on which were printed the Civil Rights Bill and the proclamation of the President declaring Martial Law.
Ben watched this day dawn with nervous dread. He had passed a sleepless night, riding in person to every Den of the Klan and issuing positive orders that no white man should come to Piedmont.
A clash with the authority of the United States he had avoided from the first as a matter of principle. It was essential to his success that his men should commit no act of desperation which would imperil his plans. Above all, he wished to avoid a clash with old Stoneman personally.
The arrival of the big excursion was the signal for a revival of negro insolence which had been planned. The men brought from the Eastern part of the state were selected for the purpose. They marched over the town yelling and singing. A crowd of them, half drunk, formed themselves three abreast and rushed the sidewalks, pushing every white man, woman, and child into the street.
They met Phil on his way to the hotel and pushed him into the gutter. He said nothing, crossed the street, bought a revolver, loaded it and put it in his pocket. He was not popular with the negroes, and he had been shot at twice on his way from the mills at night. The whole affair of this rally, over which his father meant to preside, filled him with disgust, and he was in an ugly mood.
Lynch's speech was bold, bitter, and incendiary, and at its close the drunken negro troopers from the local garrison began to slouch through the streets, two and two, looking for trouble.
At the close of the speaking, Stoneman called the officer in command of these troops, and said:
"Major, I wish this rally to-day to be a proclamation of the supremacy of law, and the enforcement of the equality of every man under law. Your troops are entitled to the rights of white men. I understand the hotel table has been free to-day to the soldiers from the camp on the river. They are returning the courtesy extended to the criminals who drilled before them. Send two of your black troops down for dinner and see that it is served. I wish an example for the state."
"It will be a dangerous performance, sir," the major protested.
The old Commoner furrowed his brow.
"Have you been instructed to act under my orders?"
"I have, sir," said the officer, saluting.
"Then do as I tell you," snapped Stoneman.
Ben Cameron had kept indoors all day, and dined with fifty of the Western troopers whom he had identified as leading in the friendly demonstration to his men. Margaret, who had been busy with Mrs. Cameron entertaining these soldiers, was seated in the dining-room alone eating her dinner, while Phil waited impatiently in the parlour.
The guests had all gone when two big negro troopers, fighting drunk, walked into the hotel. They went to the water-cooler and drank ostentatiously, thrusting their thick lips coated with filth far into the cocoanut dipper, while a dirty hand grasped its surface.
They pushed the dining-room door open and suddenly flopped down beside Margaret.
She attempted to rise, and cried in rage:
"How dare you, black brutes?"
One of them threw his arm around her chair, thrust his face into hers, and said with a laugh:
"Don't hurry, my beauty; stay and take dinner wid us!"
Margaret again attempted to rise, and screamed, as Phil rushed into the room with drawn revolver. One of the negroes fired at him, missed, and the next moment dropped dead with a bullet through his heart.
The other leaped across the table and through the open window.
Margaret turned, confronting both Phil and Ben with revolvers in their hands, and fainted.
Ben hurried Phil out the back door and persuaded him to fly.
"Man, you must go! We must not have a riot here to-day. There's no telling what will happen. A disturbance now, and my men will swarm into town to-night. For God's sake go, until things are quiet!"
"But I tell you I'll face it. I'm not afraid," said Phil quietly.
"No, but I am," urged Ben. "These two hundred negroes are armed and drunk. Their officers may not be able to control them, and they may lay their hands on you—go—go!—go!—you must go! The train is due in fifteen minutes."
He half lifted him on a horse tied behind the hotel, leaped on another, galloped to the flag-station two miles out of town, and put him on the north-bound train.
"Stay in Charlotte until I wire for you," was Ben's parting injunction.
He turned his horse's head for McAllister's, sent the two boys with all speed to the Cyclops of each of the ten township Dens with positive orders to disregard all wild rumours from Piedmont and keep every man out of town for two days.
As he rode back he met a squad of mounted white regulars, who arrested him. The trooper's companion had sworn positively that he was the man who killed the negro.
Within thirty minutes he was tried by drum-head court martial and sentenced to be shot.