قراءة كتاب The Broken Sword A Pictorial Page in Reconstruction

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The Broken Sword
A Pictorial Page in Reconstruction

The Broken Sword A Pictorial Page in Reconstruction

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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fields, and where every thing is so fragrant and ethereal. Here we may fashion pictures and weave around them gossamer draperies as insubstantial as this golden twilight.

Hard-hitting, rough-riding moss-troopers rode over the subjugated domains of the bewildered South, with swords that flashed and turned every way like Alaric's; rode hither to obliterate the past, its monuments, its shrines, its traditions; to scarify the old south with harrows and bayonets; its altars, its homes, its civilization, and to fetter with chains a great warlike people, with a purpose as fatuous as ever animated the swart maid of Philistia. Against this senseless vengeance, the South rebelled again with the same old defiance, the same old manhood. You may prod the wounded lion with pikes and sabres, but you cannot tread upon it with iron heels without hearing its roar and feeling its fangs. To these marauders, the old South was but a moor fowl to be plucked and eaten. To us she was dynastic, like Hapsburg, Plantagenet or Hohenzollern. To them the South was a huge incubator, out of which was hatched "Stratagems and treasons:" To us she was a Queen, still wearing the purple, still grasping the sceptre, as in past evolutions and crises. She was Our Queen when a full century ago, and before there was a cabin upon her plantations she pleaded for the emancipation of slaves and was insultingly asked to withdraw her petition by the Merchant Marine of Massachusetts. She was Our Queen when envenomed abolitionists were gathering the aftermath of the "Higher law proclamation;" she was Our Queen when Ossawattomie Brown unleashed his bloodhounds upon a fresher trail at Harper's Ferry; she was Our Queen when Sumpter ran up a flag that had never before fluttered in a gale, never before greeted a young nation with its maiden blushes, followed by the hopes, the prayers, the aspirations, faith and loyalty of ten million men, women and children; Our Queen when "old Traveler" was stripped of his dust covered housings and led ever so weary back into Old Mars. Bob's stables; Our Queen when the last cavalier wiped the blood from his sabre and scabbarded it forever. God grant she may always be Our Queen that we may be her liegemen, leal and right trusty in all catastrophes! Hence we go back to think of her, to write of her, though a widow bereaved of her husband, and a mother who has buried her first born. There is no sword now to gleam like a flash of light over the plumes of charging squadrons: there is no guidon to mark the line of direction through defile and mountain pass: no call of the bugle "to saddle and away," no thanksgiving like that of Jackson; "God crowned our arms with Victory at McDowell yesterday;" No smile like that of Lee as the Army of the Potomac with trailing banners was double quicking back to Washington. Ah! no, but the old South through her blinding tears is smiling still; her dear old face re-lighted by a fresher inspiration.

A trifling dash of time between 1860 and 1870, but events have been packed away within that decade, that would overlap the four corners of any other century in the calendar. Within those years were compounded somewhere in laboratories all the combustible elements of war and pillage; the casting the projectiles that would destroy a hemisphere. Broken hearts—crushed hopes—desolated homes, an enslaved country, wrongs, indignities, outrages, oppressions, all, all wrought by the cruel instrumentalities of great masters of tragedy. Here is an old mansion with turrets and esplanades and terraces long neglected and sadly out of repair. Here are great oaks of a century's growth planted and pruned by hands that have long since forgotten their cunning. Here are lapping waters singing in low sweet octaves as they did when poured out of the hollow of His Hand. Here is the old rookery out of which are ricochetting birds almost of every voice and plume. Here are cattle, red and dappled, cropping the meadow grass. Here are vast expanses clad in the refreshing drapery of nature, upheaving their grassy billows. Here are the crumbling cabins of the old slaves, in silent platoons that flank the old mansion, the earmarks of a picturesque civilization abused and denounced. Slaves, many of whom like the paintings of Titian and Murillo and Correggio in the great mullioned halls have come down from former generations. In yonder clump of soughing pines stood the little meeting house of the "cullud folks" on "Old Marsa's plantation." Here for decades they worshipped. In the little brook that glides along so cheerily singing as it goes, they had baptized adult "bredrin and sisterin." Here many of them had felt the touch of the Master upon the emancipated souls, and heard His voice in their spiritual uplifting, tenderly calling, and there when the gnarled and knotted hands had ceased their toil "Ole Marsa and Ole Misses" had laid them crosswise upon rigid, lifeless bosoms, that heaved not again with the pangs of suffering; and out yonder under the maples, hard by the little babbling brook, reverent and tender hands white and black had lowered the rude coffin and covered it up in "God's acre," and here around the little altar ole Marster, and Miss Alice and Mars Harry worshipped with them. No master, no mistress, no slave in this consecrated ground; no black, no white, in the invisible Presence; no hard times to come again; no tithing men, nor tax gatherers; no snarling, snapping wolf to snatch the gnawed bone from the hungry wife and her starving child. If the larder were empty the "great house" had an exhaustless supply. If clothes were rent there was "allus stuff in de loom;" If the clouds gathered for snow "ole marsa" would put on his great coat and knock at the doors and ask, "Boys, have you got plenty of good wood for the storm'?" If Joshua had the "rheumatics" or Melinda the "shaking ager," or little Jeff the hives, there were ointments and liquids, pills and lotions; and what physician was so kind; whose hands so soft and tender, whose voice so comforting and sympathetic as "ole missis's and young missis's?" There was the garden from which the negroes would market their vegetables; there was the little "water million" patch where little Jeff and Susan Ann would run out at midday, and thump and thump and thump and would as often run back with their mouths wide-open like a rift in a black cloud, "Mammy, oh! Mammy, dat great big water million is mo'est ripe—be ripe by Sunday sho," and their little black feet would knock off a jig on the bare floor; then there was the pig sty where Sukey the "sassy poker," in its sleekness and fatness, would grunt and frisk and cavort all the day long. Then there was "Ole Boatswain," the coon dog, lazily napping in the door—barking at the treed coon in his sleep; then there were the "tater ridges" and the pumpkins and the cotton patches; then there were the cackling hens and the pullets, the ducks and geese and guinea-fowls; the eggs that Hannah and Clarissa and Melinda had counted a score of times, and knew to a four pence a' penny how much they would fetch in the town; and "dere was de wagin wid ole Bob an' ole Pete wid pinted yeares, chawin' de bit same as it were fodder, ready to dash off fore dey wus ready;" and there were the inventoried assets in trade, "free forfs Hanna's and two forfs Melinda's and seben forfs Clarissy's," all tumbled in disorder, live stock and dead stock. And then "dere was Melinda and Judy a settin' a middle ships into de wagin, all agwine to de town." And when the heavy wheels would rattle with its human freight over the hard ground of Ingleside, as the moon was dipping its nether horn below the line of vision, and Clara Bell and Melinda "a singin' de ole ship of Zion," "ole Marster an' Missis an' Miss Alice would run outen de great house jes to see if Ned had fotched us all back safe an' sound. An' den when Christmas would come, de

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