Part 33 (1/2)
The smell was found.
A family had been boiling soap--a slave-ridden plantation was a miniature world which must be practically self-supporting. There could be no economy of labor by its scientific division. Around the soap pot the negro woman had swept some woolen rags. They were smoldering there and the faint odor had been wafted to the great house.
Socola couldn't sleep. All night long he could hear that wild commotion--the old Colonel's voice roaring from the balcony and seventy sleepy, good-for-nothing negroes with lighted candles looking for a fire in the dark. When at last he was tired of laughing at the ridiculous picture, his foolish fancy took another turn and fixed itself again on old Bob and Aunt Rhinah in their rocking chairs, swathed in cochineal flannel.
CHAPTER X
THE GAUGE OF BATTLE
Socola found the little town of Montgomery, Alabama, breathing under a suppression of emotion that was little short of uncanny on the day Jefferson Davis was inaugurated President.
The streets were crowded to suffocation and tents were necessary to accommodate the people who could not be housed.
He was surprised at the strange quiet which the spirit of the new President had communicated to the people. There was no loud talk, no braggadocio, no threats, no clamor for war. On the contrary there had suddenly developed an overwhelming desire for a peaceful solution of the crisis.
The Convention which had unanimously elected Jefferson Davis, President, and Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President, had relegated the hot heads and fire eaters to the rear.
Three great agitators had really created the new nation, William L.
Yancey of Alabama, Robert Toombs of Georgia and Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina. And they were consumed with ambition for the Presidency.
Toombs was the most commanding figure among the uncompromising advocates of secession in the South--an orator of consummate power, a man of wide learning and magnetic personality. William L. Yancey was as powerful an agitator as ever stirred the souls of an American audience since the foundation of our Republic. Barnwell Rhett of the Charleston _Mercury_ was the most influential editor the country had ever produced.
Yet the suddenness with which these fiery leaders were dropped in the hour of crisis was so amazing to the men themselves they had not yet recovered sufficient breath to begin complaints.
Toombs destroyed what chance he ever had by getting drunk at a banquet the night before the Convention met. William L. Yancey's turbulent history ruled him out of consideration. He had killed his father-in-law in a street brawl. Rhett's extreme views had been the bugle call to battle but something more than sound was needed now.
Toombs was dropped even for Vice-President for Alexander H. Stephens, the man who had pleaded in tears with his State not to secede.
The highest honor had been forced on the one man in all the South who most pa.s.sionately wished to avoid it.
So acute was the consciousness of tragedy there was scarcely a ripple of applause at public functions where Socola had looked for mad enthusiasm.
The old Const.i.tution had been reenacted with no essential change. The new President had even insisted that the Provisional Congress retain the old flag as their emblem of nationality with only a new battle flag for use in case of war. The Congress over-ruled him at this point with an emphasis which they meant as a rebuke to his tendency to cling to the hope of reconciliation.
It was exactly one o'clock on Monday, February 18, 1861, that Jefferson Davis rose between the towering pillars of the State Capitol in Montgomery and began his inaugural address. It was careful, moderate, statesmanlike, and a model of cla.s.sic English. The closing sentence swept the crowd.
”It is joyous in the midst of perilous times to look thus upon a people united in heart, whose one purpose of high resolve animates and actuates the whole; where the sacrifices to be made are not weighed in the balance against honor, and right, and liberty and equality.”
The cheer that greeted his appeal rose and fell again and again the third time with redoubled power and enthusiasm.
The President-elect stepped forward, placed his hand on the open Bible, and took the oath of office. As the last word fell from his white lips cannon thundered a salute from the hill crest and the great silk ensign of the South was slowly lifted by the hand of the granddaughter of President Tyler.
As the breeze unrolled its huge red, white and blue folds against the s.h.i.+ning Southern skies the crowd burst into hysterical applause.
A Nation had been born whose history might be brief, but the people who created it and the leader who guided its destiny were the pledge of its immortality.
Socola found no difficulty in possessing himself of every secret of the new Government. What was not proclaimed from the street corners and shouted from the housetops, the newspapers printed in double leads. The new Government had yet to organize its secret service.
The President addressed himself with energy to the task which confronted him. But seven States had yet enrolled in the Confederacy. Of four more he felt sure. The first attempt to coerce a Southern State by force of arms would close the ranks with Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas by his side. Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri were peopled by the South and the inst.i.tution of Slavery bound them in a common cause.