“I can't help it,” Dwight repeated, more calmly, though his voice shook with suppressed feeling as he went on. “If I lose all I hope for politically--and this seems like the best chance I'll ever have to get to the legislature--I'll stand by my convictions. We must have law and order among ourselves if we expect to teach such things to poor, half-witted black people. I was mad that night. You know that I love the South. Its blood is my blood. Three of my mother's brothers and two of my father's died fighting for the 'Lost Cause,' and my father was under fire from the beginning of the war to the end. In fact, it is my love for the South, and all that is good and pure and noble in it, that made my blood boil that night. I saw a part of it you didn't see.” “What was that?” Garner asked. “It was a clear moonlight night,” Dwight went on. “I was sitting at the window of my room at home, looking out over Major Warren's yard, when the first screams and shouts came from the negro quarter. I suspected what it was, for I'd heard of the threats the mountaineers had made against that part of town, but I wasn't prepared for what I actually saw. The cottage of old Uncle Lewis and Mammy Linda is just behind the Major's house, you know, and in plain view of my window. I saw the old pair come to the door and run out into the yard, and then I heard Linda's voice. 'It's my child!' she screamed. 'They are killing him!' Uncle Lewis tried to quiet her, but she stood there wringing her hands and sobbing and praying. The Major raised the window of his room and looked out, and I heard him ask what was wrong. Uncle Lewis tried to explain, but his voice could not be heard above his wife's cries. A few minutes later Pete came running down the street. They had let him go. His clothes were torn to strips and his back was livid with great whelks. He had no sooner reached the old folks than he keeled over in a faint. The Major came down, and he and I bent over the boy and finally restored him to consciousness. Major Warren was the maddest man I ever saw, and a mob a hundred strong couldn't have touched the negro and left him alive.” “I know, that was all bad enough,” Garner admitted, “but antagonizing those men now won't better the matter and may do you more political damage than you'll get over in a lifetime. You can't be a politician and a preacher both; they don't go together. You can't dispute that the negro quarter of this town was a disgrace to a civilized community before the White Caps raided it. Look at it now. There never was such a change. It is as quiet as a Philadelphia graveyard.”