Special issue of
MADELINE'S JOURNAL
June, 1868. Cooper here not 24 hrs. after we took his daughter in. Terrible scene ...
"Where is she? I demand you produce her."
He confronted Madeline on the lawn in front of the whitewashed house. Down by the river, the steam machinery chuffed at the sawmill. A blade whined, straining to cleave through live oak.
"She's on the plantation, and perfectly safe. She wants to stay with us for a while. She definitely doesn't want the strain of more arguments with you."
"God. First you do business with black Republican carpetbaggers. Now you turn my daughter against me."
"Marie-Louise is in love with the boy, Cooper. I'd look closer to Tradd Street for the cause of her defiance."
"Damn you, produce her!"
"No. The decision to leave will be hers."
"Until she reaches majority, only I have the legal right —"
"The legal right, perhaps. Not a moral one. She's almost sixteen. Many girls are married, and mothers, before that age."
Madeline walked toward him and around him. "Now, if that's all —"
"It is not. Are you aware that there is a Kuklux den in the district?"
"I've heard rumors. I've seen no evidence."
"Well, I have it on good authority. The den keeps what's called the Dead Book. It contains names of those who offend the Klan. Do you know the name at the top of the first page? It's yours."
"It doesn't surprise me." Madeline's forced calm hid any sign of the sudden tight pain in her midsection.
"I warn you, those men are dangerous. If they come here, if they hurt my daughter because of you, I won't let the courts punish you. I'll do it personally."
She tried to plead reason one last time. "Cooper, we ought not to quarrel. Things will smooth out with Marie-Louise. Give it a week or so. Meanwhile, don't forget we all have ties. We're family. My husband was your brother —"
"Don't speak of him. He's gone, and you're what you've always been — an outsider."
She retreated, wincing as if he'd whipped her across the face.
His reckless rage was out of control. "I curse the day I convinced myself you could be trusted. That I owed you the management of this plantation because of Orry. Because he wanted you here. I wish to God I could cancel that moment and tear up the agreement and cast you out, because I would, Madeline. I would! You're not fit to stand in my brother's shadow. Orry was a white man."
Jamming his tall hat on his head, he strode to his horse. His face was hollow-cheeked, the color of gruel, and wrenched by hatred as he rode away.
Orry, I can't forget what he said, or overcome the effects of it. I must not write of it at length. I do not want to fall into the slough of self-pity. But he has left a deep wound. ...
... The mine is in full operation. A little money at last!
... Mr. Jacob Lee, Savannah, rode all night to meet with me this morning. He is young, eager, comes well recommended as an architect. Raised in Atlanta, where his parents lost everything to Sherman's fire, he knows little about the Low Country, and nothing of me. Exactly why I hired him ...
Small and energetic, Lee drew swiftly on his pad with a charcoal stick. She had apologized for her unfamiliarity with architectural terms and sketched Mont Royal's columns as she recalled them. It was enough.
"The Tuscan order. The pilasters relatively freer of ornamentation than the Greek orders. A spare, clean capital and entablature — is this what you remember?"
Hands pressed together, Madeline whispered, "Yes."
"Was the siding like this? White?" He slashed horizontal lines behind the columns.
She nodded. "Tall windows, Mr. Lee. My height, or slightly taller."
"Like this?"
"Oh, yes." She couldn't hold back her tears. On his pad, created by a few expert strokes and her own imagination, she saw it at last. The second great house. The new Mont Royal ...
The house in which Cooper says I am an intruder.
July, 1868. We belong to the Union again! Congress accepted the new constitution, the state legislature has ratified it, and we were readmitted on the 9th. A great occasion for public rejoicing. But there was none. ...
... 14th Amend ratified. Andy very proud. He said, "I am a citizen now. I will fight any man who tries to deny me that." ...
... Theo German visited last night. What a splendid, upright young man. He came in full uniform, alone — a brave act, given the temper of the neighborhood. He spent all morning at the school. M-L is helping there. Unless I can no longer judge such things, they truly love one another. How they will make their relationship permanent without alienating C. forever, I do not know. ...
... Strange, times. The mixture of men controlling our lives could not be better represented then by our delegates to Congress. The senators are Mr. Robertson (of the convention, and one of the first prominent state men to join the Republicans) and Mr. Sawyer of Mass., who came down to take charge of Charleston's Normal School. Of the four representatives, Corky and Goss are Carolinians with no strong detractors, but few speak in their favor, either. Whittemoreis a Methodist Episcopal parson from New England, with a splendid bass voice; they say his powerful hymn-singing helped him win over the Negroes. Then there is the remarkable Christopher Columbus Bowen, organizer of the state Republicans and former faro dealer and gambler. He was court-martialed from the Confederate Army and, at the time of the surrender, was in Charleston jail for the alleged murder of his commander.
Gen. Canby says reorganization of the state under the Reconstruction acts is finished. The government is handed over from the military to the elected civil authorities. In Columbia we have Gen. Scott of the Bureau as governor, his ambition realized — the mulatto Mr. Cardozo as sec'y. of state — and a cold, refined Republican and Union veteran, Mr. Chamberlain, for att'y. general. Chamberlain brings both Harvard and Yale degrees to the post, along with a disdain for all Democrats.
What is most remarkable to behold, or most reprehensible, depending on one's politics, is the new legislature. ...
Cooper stood beside Wade Hampton at the rail of the gallery. Democratic Party business had brought him to Columbia to confer with party leaders. Hampton had suggested they go downtown for a firsthand look at those now running the state. From the moment Hampton led him inside the still-unfinished state-house, he was aghast.
Dirt and trash littered the hallways. The doors of the House were guarded by a shiny-faced Negro who sat in a cane-bottom chair tilted back against the wall. Ascending to the gallery, Cooper discovered what looked like a great smear of dried blood on the marble wall of the staircase.
Now he clutched the rail, stunned again. He knew that seventy-five of the one hundred twenty-four elected representatives were Negro, but seeing them in the chamber had a far greater impact. The Speaker was black. So was his clerk. In place of the decorous white youths who had formerly served as pages, Cooper saw — "Pickaninnies. Unbelievable."
Some delegates were neatly dressed, but he saw many secondhand frock coats as well. He saw short jackets and shabby slouch hats, the uniform of the field hand. He saw torn trousers; heavy plow shoes; woolen comforters and old shawls pinned around their wearers in lieu of a decent coat.
He recognized many of the white legislators. Former owners of slaves and great estates, they were a hushed minority among the blacks they once might have owned. As for the blacks, Cooper suspected their only political education was Union League cant. It would take years for such men to master the subtle arts required to govern. The state could be ruined first.