The witness was watching Stevens. "Go on, sir, if you're able," Stevens prompted gently.
"Well, like I say, the Colonel, he tol' Tom not to sign the contrack. So next day Tom went back and tol' old Mr. Woodville. Tom come over to take supper that night, which was the last time I saw him. He said Woodville got pretty mad with him. Two days later they found Tom lyin'" — the voice of the witness broke — "lyin' dead."
From the adjacent chair, Orpha Munro put his arm around the weeping black man. To the clerk Stevens said, "Let the record clearly show that the murder occurred as a consequence of the man Tom's refusal to work under terms amounting to slavery."
"I must beg the pardon of my colleague." Snappish, Senator Reverdy Johnson of Maryland waved his pen. "I am in sympathy with this gentleman's loss. But he has brought forth no evidence to demonstrate conclusively a relationship between the unfortunate slaying and the events preceding it."
Stout glared at the Democrat, a politician of distinguished background who was nevertheless proving an obstructionist on the committee. Stevens too looked choleric. "Do you wish the record to so state, Senator?"
"I do, sir."
"Let it be done," Stevens said.
"I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania," Johnson said, satisfied and not the least grateful.
No matter, Stout thought, controlling his anger. He and Stevens and the core group of Republican idealists in the Congress were very happy with the bulk of the testimony the committee had received. Black witnesses and Bureau officers from state after state had told' stories of physical and legal abuse of freedmen — while the President kept asserting that Congress had no right to intervene.
But the Tennessee tailor was on the run, while the Republican cause was blessed by accidents like the Memphis rioting. Further, to counter a possible court decision declaring the civil rights bill unconstitutional, there was already in preparation a Fourteenth Amendment, which would restate the bill's essential guarantees: full citizenship for all blacks and denial of representation to any state withholding the franchise from eligible males over twenty-one.
The Joint Committee on Reconstruction would soon be ready to write its report, which no doubt would focus on the South's effort to abridge freedom by illegal means, especially by enforcement of the Black Codes. The report would offer massive evidence of this activity and once again affirm the supremacy of the Congress in setting matters right. And if that didn't finish Johnson with the public, Stout and his fellow Radicals would write a second freedmen's bill to extend the Bureau's life. Johnson would veto it again, and be overridden again. Freedom's army was on the march, and Sam Stout was one of its commanding officers.
The elderly witness had once more broken down. He sobbed into his hands despite Munro's efforts to calm him. Stevens left the table. Stout rose. He and Stevens exchanged glances as the latter moved down to put a sympathetic hand on the shoulder of the witness.
Senator Johnson showed disapproval of Steven's behavior. Reporters in the back of the hearing room' scribbled swiftly. Good, Stout thought as he slipped to the door. Tomorrow morning they could look forward to some favorable copy in friendly papers, commending Stevens, and hence all Republicans, for continuing to comfort the oppressed.
July, 1866. More rioting. New Orleans this time. Courier says at least 200 dead.
Andrew J. vetoed bill to continue Freedmen's Bureau.
They say the veto will not stand, and so J. will seek a means to retaliate.
... He has found it. J. denounced the Fourteenth Amendment, urging our state and all of Dixie not to ratify it. Tennessee immediately ratified it and Gov. Brownlow — the "Parson" — notified Washington with the words, "Give my respects to the dead dog in the White House."
What next?
KILLING OF A NEGRO BY GEN. FORREST.
A letter from Sunflower County, Miss., says a negro employed on Gen. FORREST's plantation, while assaulting his (the negro's) sick wife yesterday, was remonstrated with by FORREST.
The negro drew a knife and attempted to kill FORREST who, after receiving a wound in the hand, seized an axe and killed the negro. Gen. FORREST then gave himself up to the Sheriff. The negroes on the plantation justify the homicide. ...
20
On the winter count, Wooden Foot painted the Jackson Trading Company inside a tipi under a tiny Buffalo Hat. Outside he added two stick figures waving hatchets and a third with stick hands covering the fork of his stick legs. Whenever Boy saw that part of the picture he put his hands over his mouth, Indian fashion, and giggled.
As the snowdrifts began to melt, a white visitor rode into the Cheyenne village where the traders had wintered. Broad smiles and shouting greeted him. Mothers raised their babes to touch the black cassock visible under a buffalo robe. Wooden Foot presented Charles to the weathered, gray-haired Jesuit missionary.
Father Pierre-Jean DeSmet was sixty-five now, a legendary figure. Born in Belgium, he'd emigrated to America as a young man. In 1823, he'd left the Catholic novitiate near St. Louis to begin his remarkable career on the Plains. He not only proselytized the Indians, he also became their partisan. Some of his journeys took him as far as the Willamette Valley. To the Sioux, the Blackfeet, the Cheyennes, and other tribes he was "Blackrobe," a confessor, a mediator, a spokesman in councils of the white men, a friend.
Over the evening fire, DeSmet displayed good humor and a broad knowledge of Indian affairs. There was no doubt of his loyalty:
"Mr. Main, I say to you that if the Indians sin against the whites, it is only because the whites have greatly sinned against them. If they become angry, it is because the whites provoked them. I accept no other explanation. Only when Washington abandons truculence as an official policy will peace prevail on these plains."
"What do you think the chances are that it will happen, Father?"
"Poor," DeSmet said. "Greed too often conquers a godly impulse. But that does not defeat me or discourage me. I will strive to bring a peaceable kingdom till God calls me home."
Three roads carried most of the traffic west of the Missouri. The old Overland Trail to Oregon followed the valley of the Platte, with a newer branch, Bozeman's Trail, veering off to the Montana gold fields. The Santa Fe Trail ran southwest to New Mexico. Lying between the northern and southern routes, the Smoky Hill Road followed the river along a generally westerly route to the Colorado mines.
In May of '66 the Jackson Trading Company met another white man while still thirty miles south of the Smoky Hill. The man drove a covered wagon, wore braids, and had cut the hair over his forehead in bangs, then greased it so that it stood up. He was fat, with a face that reminded Charles of a Father Christmas who'd just come off a week's binge. He greeted the traders cordially and invited them to camp the night with him.
"No thanks. We're in a hurry, Glyn," Wooden Foot said, not smiling. He signaled his companions to ride on. Once past the wagon, Charles looked over his shoulder and reacted with surprise at the sight of an Indian girl, fourteen or fifteen, peeking at them from the back of it. He had an impression of prettiness ruined by too much eating; the girl had the multiple chins of a woman of middle age.