“There’s no more of that kind of doings here than in any other place in the South,” said a third, “the fact is there a’n’t more than forty-five or fifty white persons live in this village, and the Bakers and Gaston and them, think they shouldn’t be responsible to any laws passed by _colored men_, and think it is an outrage if they or other white folks are arrested for violating them; and the niggers have mostly let them do as they pleased, which has made the exceptions seem personal and harder to stand. “On the other hand, it’s likely the niggers don’t waste any love on old Bob, as they naturally can’t forget how he got his property; and it is likely there’s all the envious feelings the poor are apt to have against the rich, besides, which makes their overbearing ways and impositions, and violations of town ordinances seem more offensive; and it’s possible they take offence sometimes when none is intended; maybe it is so on both sides, though the niggers are not _naturally_ suspicious, we know. It’s just an envious, suspicious village, with overbearing and suspicious white neighbors.” “There’s a little more than that too,” said another man. “Here’s a State with a big nigger majority on election days, and a county with a bigger one; and a State and national campaign a coming, and it’s the centennial, and the nigger ‘gush’ is tantalizing to them that don’t want a union with the North, unless they can control it; and the whites naturally want to begin the next hundred years with the State in their hands.” “Oh, fol-de-rol-dol! The superior race _ought_ to rule. That’s the whole of it,” said another. “All that doesn’t make this right,” said the first speaker. “The whites have had the best chance to be civilized, and the negroes have _never done anything_ like this. Talk about Georgia! Georgia has never been guilty of such a barbarous thing as this, and had it not been for those Bean Island men, it never would have happened.” “_That stirs fury all over one, sir_; to have that said after I have strove so hard to keep things quiet in Bean Island!” said Uncle Jesse, “I shall inquire about that;” and scarcely bidding a hasty adieu to his friends, he abruptly left the place, and mounting his horse, rode home, and hastened to the residence of Deacon Atwood. “Deacon,” said he, “a very nice gentleman from Georgia says that had it not been for Bean Island people, that them men would never have been killed.”