RECONSTRUCTION: THE KU KLUX.
USE of the mountain! Dost thou not recall,
In Memory's nightmare dream, the hideous days
Of Reconstruction, when, to war's defeat,
Was added the Plutonian dread of terror's nigh
When military power rul'd our land,
Prostrate in ashes, with an iron rod?
When courts were silenc'd, judges rudely torn
From off the bench, great seals of office seiz'd?
When freemen were denied the ballot-box
And slaves made citizens, with all the rights,
Bequeath'd to Anglo-Saxons, by heroic sires,
Who won those rights in battle? When the feet
Of former slaves were on the master's neck?
When offices of state, to sovereigns given,
Became the spoil of menials, drunk with power?
When branded felons sprang from bursting jails,
To frame organic laws for commonwealths?
When virtue ceas'd to be inviolate,
When even spotless womanhood divine
That holiest thing this side the stars-was held
In light esteem, and to the fear expos'd
Of nameless horrors, worse than death's or hell's?
When gentle blacks to brutal fiends were turn'd
By treachery's poison'd chalice? It was then
That, to maintain a white supremacy,
To shelter innocence, to keep unstain'd
An Anglo-Saxon's hearth, the ku klux rode.
'Twas the base carpet-bagger's fiendish workThis strife between the races, erstwhile friends.
Its seat of rancor was that crow's nest, call'd
The Freedman's Bureau. When, with scorn, I ask,
Was ignorance so dup'd by infamy,
Since Satan father'd the primordial lie,
As when an unsuspecting race of blacks
Was victimiz'd by that colossal fraud-
Of forty acres to a phantom mule!
Was ever promise fair more foully pledg'd?—
All for the negro's vote, and baser still,
To alienate him from his life-long friends.
Not all were scamps;-perhaps an upright man,
By some mysterious chance was now and then
Found at the bureau, like a lonesome fly
Caught in the ointment; but the motley crew
Was mostly of a kind, and unredeem'd
By one lone virtue. Blush, O Liberty,
To read the catalogue of crimson crimes
Committed in thy name by sycophants,
Some of whom even dar'd, alas, to wear
Religion's holy cloak, but to engage
In Satan's sorry service, and to soil
The robe of Heaven with Perdition's smut.
Vile hypocrites and whited sepulchres!
Serving the church, like an Iscariot did
The Man of Galilee-ready to hail
The Master with a kiss and to betray
The Christ of Heaven for the coin of hell.
Ye gods! If ever such a festering mass
Of foul corruption can encumber ground
Made holy by celestial feet, becloud
The portals of the New Jerusalem
Or darken its approaches, it will be
To sit among the lepers who are doom'd,
For aye, unheal'd, to groan outside the gates!
Unworthy of the great and generous North,
Whose nobler sons, in welcome multitudes,
Came later to repair the waste of war,
This vampire came, when blood was still unslak'd,
Abetted by his base confederate,
That native turn-coat call'd the scallawag.
Miscreant, traitor, reptile-all that's vile,
Accursed be thy name forevermore.
The one small service which so mean a wretch
Can do his country is to hate her well
And such as ye may all who hate her be!
When old Prometheus to the rock was bound,
'Twas not the eagle of the sun-lit crags
That, in the victim's vitals, plung'd his beak,
It was the carrion vulture! When the South
Lay helpless, it was then the harpies flock'd
To feast on her misfortunes; it was then
That, like a storm-cloud, in her lowering skies
The crows assembl'd, and among her tombs,
Hyena-hellions burrow'd for the dead.
The carpet-bagger! O, ye gods! For him
Language can coin no epithet too base,
Perdition find no dark abyss too deep.
Too good for him a leper's colony-
An Aetna's seething fire-a noisome fen,
With vapors foul, where reptiles crawl and hiss.
Aye, win'd and din'd in state, he may have slept
With Dives in the halls of power;-to the dregs,
With King Belshazzar quaff'd the gilded cup
Of guilty Babylon;-but unto him belongs
No guest-robe at the banquet and no seat
Of honor in the halls of history!
A leprous libel on the race of man,
A moral mendicant, array'd in rags,
A beggar on the steps, without the soul
Of righteous Lazarus, but with all his sores!
Scorn'd by the very dogs, whose lapping tongues
To such pollution can apply no balm
But whose offended nostrils mutely shun
A canker loathsome even unto brutes!
Barr'd from a sinner's grace;-to such as he,
A decent Judas would withhold his hand,
In treachery's welcome to a traitor's hell;
A virtuous Ananias would, forsooth,
Compar'd with him, pass for the soul of truth!
Did not the echoes of the dashing hoofs
Ring on thy rock, O mount, disturb thy rest,
When through the woods, in sable robes disguis'd,
The riders flew, like chaff before the wind,
The horsemen rode, with lightning speed,
To execute the Empire's will-the will of God?
Gone is the Realm Invisible, forever gone.
But, ah, it did its work! It saved the South!
It kept unstain'd the lilies of our land!
It bought, if sometimes at the price of blood,
Protection for our holy womanhood!
For its proud epitaph, be this enough:
That in its ranks our noblest sons went forth; That, at its head, with heaven's avenging sword, To right the wrong, a Bedford Forrest rode!
Some echoes must yon mountain-side have caught
From burning lips now seal'd, when patriots held
The great Bush Arbor meeting. July's sun,
On the meridian belt, was polar ice-
A glacier glittering in an arctic sea,
Compar'd with the Promethean fire that burned
That day in Saxon bosoms. Never will
That day be voiceless, for its thunder-roll
|