The Fanatics/Chapter 15

In the days that ensued after the mustering out of Tom's regiment neither he nor Dorbury had time for idleness. The events attending the conflict both in the field and at home had followed each other too swiftly for that. Tom had found military service under the government in a capacity that gave him larger experience in the world of men. His letters had given his father exceeding joy and Mary and Nannie wore inordinately proud of him. His messages to them were read over and over again as the girls prepared themselves for sleep or sat half-robed upon their bedsides.

The gossips had still spared the brother the story of the breaking up of his home and he went on with his work happy in his unconsciousness. When the final reorganization of the First took place in November, he relinquished his other duties and joined his comrades at Louisville, whence they set out on their journey further South.

​In the meantime, Dorbury had continued to seethe as before, with the conflicting elements within its narrow borders. Patriotism and prejudice ran riot side by side, and it was a hard race between them. One set of men talked of the glory of righteous war, while another deplored the shedding of fraternal blood. The war Republicans hurled invectives at the peace advocates, and the latter hurled back invectives and reproaches.

Before the First went back into the field an incident occurred which showed the temper of both parties. A meeting was being held in the square in front of the courthouse. Its object was to protest against what the opponents of the war called the attempted coercion of free citizens. Mr. Vallandigham, whose position, both as a prominent citizen and former congressman gave weight to whatever he said, had spoken and the hearts of his hearers were inflamed with bitterness. Another speaker, half-hearted and little trusted rose to address the assembly. He was a fiery demagogue and depended for his influence upon his power to work upon the passions of the lower element. His audience knew this. He knew it, and for an instant, paused in embarrassment.

Just at that moment, "Nigger Ed" strolled up and joined the crowd. The eye of the orator ​took him in, and lighted with sudden inspiration. Here was all the text he needed. Raising his tall, spare form, he pointed in silence until every face was turned upon the negro. Then he said, "Gentlemen, it is for such as that and worse that you are shedding your brothers' blood." With out another word, he sat down. It was the most convincing speech he had ever made. The unhappy advent of the negro had put a power into the words of a man who otherwise would have been impotent. It was the occasion and the man to take advantage of it. It may have been clap-trap. But in the heated spirit of the time, it was a shot that went straight to the mark. The crowd began to murmur and then broke into hisses and jeers. Rude jests with more of anger than humor in them were bandied back and forth.

One side was furious that blood should be spilled for such as the negro bell-ringer, while the other was equally incensed at being accused of championing his cause.

"Nigger-stealers! Abolitionists!" shouted one.

"Copperheads!" shouted the other, while some of them tried fruitlessly to explain that they bad no interest in niggers.

"He even wears your army cap!" some one cried. "Why don't you give him a gun?"

The stentorian voice of Bradford Waters rose ​over the storm. "Your friends, the rebels," he said, "have got the niggers digging trenches, and tilling the fields at home to help them in food."

"Ah, that's their business," was the reply.

"I don't know that a gun is any better than a spade."

Back and forth the controversy raged, each party growing hotter and hotter. Negro Ed stood transfixed at the tempest he had raised. He looked from face to face but in none of them found a friend. Both sides hated him and his people. He was like a shuttlecock. He was a reproach to one and an insult to the other.

"Gent'men, gent'men," he began to stammer to the men about him who were hustling him.

"Knock him down, he's been serving the men who fought our brothers."

"Tear off his cap, the black hound, it's the same our soldiers wear."

"Kill him; if it wasn't for his kind, we'd have had no trouble!"

"What's he doing here, anyhow? This is a white man's Union. Down with niggers!"

And so the bewildered black man was like to be roughly handled by both parties, but that an opportune interruption occurred. The gavel sounded sharp and harsh and some one was speaking.

​"Let Ed alone," the speaker said. "He has done nothing to you. He has rung our bells, followed our fires, amused our children and always been harmless."

The crowd began to remember that all this was true.

"He is not his people, nor the father of them. The trouble is not with him but with us. It's not without, it's within. It's not what he is but what we believe."

Stephen Van Doren's voice had arrested the activities of the mob and they gave him absolute attention. In the respite, the negro, glad of his release, slipped away with the insulted cap in his hand. What he felt is hardly worth recording. He was so near the animal in the estimation of his fellows (perhaps too near in reality) that he could be presumed to have really few mental impressions. He was frightened, yes. He was hurt, too. But no one would have given him credit for that much of human feeling. They had kicked a dog and the dog had gone away. That was all. Yet Ed was not all the dog. His feeling was that of a child who has tried to be good and been misunderstood, He should not have felt so, though, for he knew Dorbury and the times by an instinct that was truer than conscious analysis, and he should have known, if he did not, that the people who mistreated him, were ​not sane and accountable. But the under dog does not stop to philosophize about his position. So Ed went his way in anger and in sorrow.

After Van Doren's interruption, the meeting went on in a somewhat more moderate strain, though the speeches that were made were bitter enough. A new, but vigorous and efficient governor was in the chair, and at times the people chafed under the enforcement of measures which, in a state of war, he deemed necessary. No great disaster had yet come to their own troops to unite the people in one compact body, or to make them look farther than themselves or their fancied personal grievances. The sight of the wounded and the news of the dead had not yet thrilled them into the spirit for self-sacrifice. This was to come later. It was to come when the soil of the state was threatened by hostile invasion; when Pittsburg Landing had told its bloody story, and the gloom of death hung over their homes.

But now all was different. After the first enthusiasm for war had passed, a reaction had set in. Recruiting went on slowly, while the citizens looked on with but languid interest. On the other hand, they flamed with anger at every hint that their personal rights were being trampled on. When men, lacking both honor and loyalty, wrote seditious letters; when others, more earnest ​than prudent, talked in the public highways or harangued from platforms, it was all free speech, the fetich so dear to American worshippers, and they resented any attempt to restrain or abridge it.

A man might live and work under the flag whose soldiers he counselled to desert. That was all within his private right. Another might assail the motives and powers of the government under which he lived, sneer at its chief executive, and pour out the vials of his wrath against the unholy war which the Union was waging, and still, it was only his right. Any attempt to check disaffection within its borders was construed into coercion. Where now and then, some too bold speaker was arrested by the authorities, war Democrat, and peace Democrat united in denouncing the act as high-handed and unwarranted, and Republican joined with them or was silent.

Upon one thing they were all united, and that was their hatred and disdain for the hapless race which had caused the war. Upon its shoulders fell all the resentment and each individual stood for his race. If their boys suffered hardships in the field, they felt that in some manner they avenged them by firing a negro's home or chasing him along the dark streets as he made his way home from church. It became an act of ​patriotism to push a black woman from the sidewalks.

It only needed the knowledge that free men of color had offered their services to the state to bring out a storm of invective and abuse against the "impudent niggers." There were some who expressed fear that the governor might yield to their plea, and threatened if he did, that they would call their sons and brothers from the army, and resent the insult by withholding all aid from the Union arms. But they need have had no fear of their governor. Strong as he was and independent, he was too wise a man not to know and to respect the trend of popular sentiment, and he heard with unyielding heart the prayer of the negroes to be put in the blue. But the time did come when the despised race was emancipated and they were accepted in the field as something other than scullions. The time came, yes, but this governor was not one of the men who helped to hasten it. It may have been his personal feeling, rather than his acquiescence to the will of the people that prompted his reply to the Massachusetts recruiting agent. The New England commonwealth was recruiting her black regiments and was drawing men of color from every state. When the chief executive of Ohio was consulted, he was so far from objecting to the use of his negroes by ​another other state that he expressed himself to the effect that he would be glad if they would take "every damned nigger out of the state." It may have been irritation at the anxiety and annoyance that this unwelcome population had caused the good governor which brought forth this strong expression. Whether it was this or not, the fact remains that many black men of Ohio went into the Massachusetts regiments, and when they had made for themselves a record that shamed contempt, it was to that state that popular belief gave the honor of their deeds.

This forecasting of events would be entirely out of place but that it serves in some manner to show the spirit of the times in a loyal and non-slaveholding state at a crucial moment of the nation's life ; it was a moment when only a spark was needed to light the whole magazine of discontent and blow doubt and vacillation into a conflagration of disloyalty.

The spark was near being supplied on a Monday night in May. Upon the flint of Dorbury's public pride and prejudice the blow was struck and for a time the flash seemed imminent. For a long time a brave and rugged citizen of the little town, a man having the courage of his convictions and deeply trusted by his fellow-men, had been outspoken in his denunciation of the war. Wherever he was, he did not fear to ​express his belief in its illegality and unrighteousness. He was a strong man and an earnest one, and in his strength and earnestness lay his power over his fellow-men. He had represented them in Congress and he had done well. They believed in him, and now when he dared to say of the nation struggling for its very life that it was wrong, he found many followers, though some, like Bradford Waters, had already fallen from Vallandigham's side. For a while, he went his way unmolested, until one speech, a thought too bold in expression, brought down upon him the wrath—a wrath rather restraining than vindictive—of the government.

It was near midnight when a small company of soldiers from Cincinnati went to the door of Vallandigham's Dorbury home. The inmates of the house were abed, and all was darkness and silence. There was no reply to the thunderous summons on the panels, some inkling of the object of this midnight visit having leaked out or been suspected. The summons was repeated and while the men talked in low whispers below, a head was put out of an upstairs window and a voice called aloud some apparently meaningless words, which, however, were construed into a signal for aid. From this time, the soldiers delayed no longer, for in the present state of feeling the approach of reinforcements to those ​within would possibly result in bloodshed. This they were anxious to avoid, so making their way into the house they went from room to room, frequently having to break open locked and barred doors until they found the object of their search, and in spite of threat and protest, hurried away with him to a waiting train.

A small crowd collected, and followed the soldiers to the station, but with the exception of a stone occasionally hurled, it confined itself to threats and abuse.

"This will be heard from," said one.

"It will do more to make Ohio fight against the war than anything else."

"Kidnappers! kidnappers!" was the cry.

On the morrow the excitement in Dorbary was intense, but history has dealt sufficiently with all that was done then, with the speeches that were made, the bombastic letters that were written the damage that was inflicted upon private property.

The town, iron-clad in its personal pride, gave itself up to an orgy of disloyalty. A tempest in a teapot, some one will say. But the spirit that raged in the teapot showed the temper of the larger cauldron which seethed over the same fire.

What do you think of this later bit of work?" asked Davies on the way to the office the morning after the arrest.

​"I think what I have always thought, that whatever is good for the Union is right." But his tone was not so assured as usual.

"You used to think a great deal of Vallandigham, though."

"In such a time as this, I have no time for personal feelings. I have said that before."

"Yes, it seems about true, we all seem to have taken leave of our senses and to have suspended the operations both of our country's constitution and of our natural affections."

"It is a strange time and we must change with the times."

"It is a horrible, a fanatical time, and I shall thank God when it is over, however the end may come, through Union or peaceful separation."

"I would rather see the country drenched in blood than the latter."

"Waters," said Davies slowly, as if the light were just dawning upon him, "I'm afraid you're a fanatic, I'm afraid you're a fanatic."

But Waters went on moodily and did not reply.