Some Brief Excerpts
In Part l it becomes clear that antebellum Atticus Haygood, a patriotic Georgian, accepts Southern slavery as the will of God—but his conscience unexpectedly prickles him. Early in his preaching career we find him, a young circuit-riding preacher, in Alabama’s hilly backwoods . . .
Sara led Atticus to her small cabin, barely invisible down the horse path.
“When Pa gets back, we go next. Together.”
“Never mind your pa—because, if you ever see him again he’ll be hanging from a tree.” He found himself listening for hoof beats from the main trail. “Just get the girls. I’ll take them to Old Sam’s farmhouse for bible lessons. Like nothing else is happening.”
Later, Atticus ponders—
. . . She was trying to save the children—but for what? To be sold into a slavery they never knew? He told himself: I’m committing a crime against my fellow Georgians—against the very code of honor we live by: I promised a negress not to report runaways. . . . If nothing else, he was ignoring rumors of a pending slave revlolt—
“Lincoln as our president? Never! Cast out Beelzebub—”
“You can see Satan in those black Lincoln eyes.”
“If South Carolina doesn’t secede first, Georgia will.”
As the churchmen gathered, the strident tone, the blunt vulgarities, outdid Georgia’s 1859 Methodist-South Conference. Atticus was aghast, hearing: Once Lincoln’s reign of terror erupts, one cleric whispered to the next, a million niggers sit primed to rise up, sweep across Georgia.
As Atticus attends Methodist clergy meeting he hears . . .
“If Georgia doesn’t leave the Union, what will the Yankees do to us? Look at Kentucky—“
Rumors ran amuck of whole families already hacked to bits in Kentucky or Kansas or the Appalachians, mixed with whispers of Lincoln’s love feasts with black voodoo shamans and roasting white babies. We shall all die. No one thought of war but only of escaping Armageddon.
In Part 2 — Atticus experiences war quite differently from that of Northern leaders or even slave-holdingGeorgians he respects. But he still believes God will never fail the South.
Across the field near Bull Run, Atticus watched a gaggle of boys scuttle through the turf and mud, reaching down to grab a button or pouch from bodies not yet picked up by the Quartermaster corps. Beyond was a cobblestone road—Had he actually seen, just one day earlier, fancy carriages and gentlemen-fops and ladies eating from picnic boxes as the battle raged? He tripped over a half-buried body, fell to his knees, his eyes only inches away from white eye-sockets with no pupils. Vultures had feasted overnight. . . .
The mental horror-show continued to play within his mind as he trekked alongside the mule-drawn wagon carrying the wounded and fevered sick away from the enemy’s thunder. With a paper soaked in morphine, he put a few drops on the mouth of each soldier, listening to their last gasps before the slide into death.
He didn’t have to mention God. They did.
Aboard a cattle car, a shaking soldier chided his chaplain: “Kindly leave me to God.” Others cried for their mothers. Most said nothing. It wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, the way he’d been taught.
God had simply moved in and taken over. He, the minister, was trespassing into very private conversations between each soul and God. Still, God expected him to pull his weight. Stop after stop, he scoured for food his sickest could eat, but found paltry pickings. Through the black of night, he filled gunnysacks with long grass to use for makeshift pillows. He could only call on God to be merciful—because if he didn’t, he would have cursed the very heavens that could have stopped all this
In Part 3— Atticus confronts early postwar decimation and chaos that forces him to question his beliefs, especially his firm belief that God would not abandon the South . . . and we begin to see other views.
Rep. Rutherford Hayes knew the new rules even before the Thirty-Ninth Congress convened: No Southern representatives would be seated for this session of Congress. His old friend, Texas Senator Guy Bryan, would find President Johnson going out of his way to give amnesty to just about every Rebel who applied for it—except, perhaps, for most Texans.
Hayes still demurred. It’s too soon to seat those whowant to deny the Negro every civil right on earth—too soon to let the Southern white traitors start making the laws of this land. The secessions may have been illegal, but the South had done it anyway.
I wonder if Bryan knows where his slaves are now—
*
(Rev. Henry McNeal) Turner had removed his small, round spectacles to peer more deeply, disturbingly, into Atticus’ soul: “Why are we so threatening to white people? . .
“My people want only to learn to read and write, to be good citizens— they hardly dare to believe they can keep their children, let alone educate them. We have no past history to build on—Slavery never taught a man how to be free. We have no example except yours—and the lessons from our own past?” He snickered, then spoke as if clearing his throat: “Grovel, nigger, grovel.”
In Part 4 — a more mature Atticus Haygood— finds himself at odds with racial values of the “resurrecting” South, as the KKK begins. Aboard a train, Atticus hears . . .
“We’ve got the Freedmen’s Bureau in Memphis working for us, now. If they find a nigger on the street not working, they put him to work in a chain gang—the only way the nigger knows how to work—under the whip.” The bragger leaned toward Atticus as the train swayed. “You been to Atlanta before?”
“I grew up there.” My father helped create that city.
“We’re meeting friends there, mostly retired Confederate officers—Did you ever hear of Nathan Bedford Forrest? The most feared general of the Confederate cavalry. He killed all them damn nigger-soldiers at that Missouri fort—”
“He’s one of you?”
“No—he’s our Grand Wizard.”
Atticus looked puzzled. Then he saw the initials KK embroidered on both men’s cravats—and it made no sense.
“You said you fought at Lookout Mountain, made it into Tennessee—“
“I was a chaplain, not a soldier,” Atticus demurred. Am I Peter now, denying Jesus to Pilate’s soldiers?—Peter the Rock? Or Peter the Coward?
Atticus’s bishop, George Pierce, scrutinizes another cleric . . .
Pierce never glanced at the papers Atticus had handed him. He needed to watch every step Holland McTyeire made, every cent of church money he spent. He knew Mac had reached out as far as New York City, to moguls willing to destroy the legacy of the circuit-riding preacher. And who was this Vanderbilt man? Did he just want to get this name embossed above some university’s gate? Pierce’s face turned as red as a Romish cardinal’s hat. He knew in his own heart, his concern centered on Emory—not on the fantasy university Mac wanted to build. Emory had not yet revived from the horrors of war
In PART 5 Haygood—as his involvement (and repute) in education grows— frees his mind from his deference to other men’s judgments, but not without a soul-searching struggle to observe the world as it really exists around him. . . . which included educated Black men—
“Dr. Haygood, this is Booker Washington. This plucky young fellow was named superintendent of our newest Negro college in Alabama—”
Washington bowed slightly to Atticus. Atticus nodded. Were this a white man, he would have extended his hand—
“Your students are already in classes—at desks?” Bishop Holsey nudged the two men toward a bench in the shade.
“We’ll pay the freight, on anything.”
“Maybe some farm tools, carpentry tools—” Atticus caught his words in the air—I’m sitting between two Black men, in discourse, in public—
“That takes more than bricks.”
Atticus felt the young man’s enthusiasm. “I’ve a few old desks—”
Holiness and the Fire (Robert Toombs words are from his collected letters)
At the Kimball Hotel that morning . . . Atticus saw Toombs lift his stew bowl, holding it high, as if it were the sacramental cup, to announce:
“Here in Georgia we’ve revised our nigger Constitution—and, I hope, our mutual friends—Georgia’s 49th governor and newly elected senator, Alfred Colquitt—will help us save the ballot for those who respect the supremacy of the white race.”
Toombs lowered his bowl with a steadied hand. “I never did like the Union’s Constitution, except for its sanction of black bondage, of course.”
Before even Toombs could raise either his voice or his cognac glass, a ghostly voice boomed out behind Toombs’ ear so loud it lifted the hair on his neck:
“May the curse of God purge your soul—may you drown in the toxin of your own devil’s spirits.”
A loud crashing noise in the hallway exploded like a cannon-ball breaking through the walls, the doors. Heads turned, chairs kicked back. Atticus gripped the table as it swerved, about to flip over—as if an earthquake was rocking the hotel—
Men around him scattered. Some drew pistols, a few fled to the cloakroom—The chant of blustering male voices streaming in from the lobby swelled into a ballyhoo—Down with liquor—
Part 6 – Written in the first person, in the voice of Haygood’s daughter, Lolly, this final section offers the reader a more intimate (and subjective) view of Haygood’s final months and most painful decisions.
Through the oaken door, Mama and I could hear the stranger snarl. “The colored beast is getting educated beyond the capacity of his brain, because of you, Dr. Haygood. You’re part of the conspiracy to destroy our Godly civilization—and you must be stopped—”
The strange voice grew shallow now, the steam dissipating: “Haven’t you done enough harm, my friend? We are trying to help you . . . Become one of us. Even Senator Gordon remains faithful to his Klan roots—” . . .
*
Perhaps at the urging of her guardian angel, perhaps thinking it was an invitation, Mama had opened Warren Candler’s letter. There was a dagger inside that letter—But what happened more immediately, that very evening, was to change our whole family’s life forever.
After dinner, as I stacked the last dishes, I heard Uncle George call out: “I know what’s behind all this. I can handle it.”
Then I heard Pa: “No, you won’t handle it for me. This is not your albatross—It’s mine—”
I heard no other comment. I may have been the only one in hearing distance who knew Pa was still connected to reality, and not mumbling nonsense.
Then Uncle Will said: “Candler speaks of a plan whereby you can be cured—.”
“Cured of what?”—(Heresy? Treason?)— “They have persecuted me, they will persecute you—“
It was then we heard a commotion outside, and a curdling scream from the front porch, where Cissy and Alisha were sitting. When we looked out the kitchen window, our eyes were drawn to a white cross burning beyond the side porch—far too close to the gnarled old white oak tree that grew more sideways than up—with a body hanging from it. . . .
*
Did I ever tell you, I agree with you? Slavery was, indeed, part of God’s plan for the African in America.” Rev. Henry Turner folded his hands tightly and rubbed his palms. It was the first time he was in Papa’s house. “In America we were to confront the formidable power of the white race—the greatest challenge God ever gave to any group of human beings. Our people need to return to Africa, to make that land what the white man has made America.”[1]
“God grant that it happen but without our mistakes,” Pa finally said. “So . . . you will come back to America?”
“For more shiploads.” Then Turner began to spill the contents of his mind: “When our Supreme Court nullified the Civil Rights Act—the most inhumane of all verdicts against the most loyal people in human history—“
*
A month later, I stood hushed in the sacred space surrounding Papa—the space between life-on-this-earth and beyond-the-veil. . . .
With Mama and Warren sang and held each other until the bell on the porch tolled mournfully, in a tone and urgency we had never heard it ring before. Mama and Warren went answer it.
As if pushed into the foyer with the icy winter air, General Clement Evans stepped forward—with two policemen.“We have a warrant for the arrest of Dr. Atticus Haygood—“
[1] Turner’s words in this conversation are taken from his writings and speeches.