“I cannot tell, Jesse; but I’m glad you are all here. If you stay here, you will not be hurt. But I didn’t think till now,——some of them may be straggling off here, and I had better go back to my store,” and the old man walked sadly away. The night had set in, dark and moonless; and an hour’s brisk discharge of small arms was followed, (after an interval of respite), by the booming of cannon, which heightened the terror and direful forebodings of the listeners. Uncle Jesse’s dwelling became a tabernacle to the Lord that night; for from it arose the ceaseless voice of true prayer—“the soul’s sincere desire,” through all those hours of darkness and terror, till just ere the dawn of the Sabbath morning, his neighbors departed to their several places of abode. CHAPTER IX. THE SITUATION. “Peace fool! I would have peace and quietness, but the fool will not.” SHAKESPERE. UNCLE JESSE, as the reader is by this time aware, was a man of influence among his neighbors, few of whom, of either race, were capable of such just and comprehensive views of their political and social relations. Little influenced by color prejudice (which is common to both races, though from widely different causes and in various degrees, throughout the United States), he possessed great reverence for law, as such; a fact mainly due to a residence of several years among the law-abiding people of that portion of the State of Ohio known as The Western Reserve, at a period when his mind was peculiarity receptive. Born a slave in 1834, he seized the first opportunity offered by the late war, to flee from bondage and learn to live like a man. Aunt Phebe preferred to wait with their two little children, her invalid mother, and aged grandfather, for the coming of the “Yankees,” which was confidently and hopefully expected. And so in 1867 Uncle Jesse returned and found her and their children free, and thriving, in the same cabin in which he left them, though the “big house” was vacant, and the plantation in new hands. At that time the Southern States were rife with utter lawlessness and bitter animosities; and acts of malicious and cruel outrage were frequent occurrences. From the first settlement of the State, society had been divided into many and antagonistic classes, throughout which, however, prevailed an universal and sycophantic _aping_, each class of that above it; while the upper stratum sat in serene security of social distinction—fortune or misfortune, personal respectability or degradation, culture or ignorance, plethora or poverty, _all_ were forgotten or obscured in the penumbra of that formidable and enigmatical word _birth_, untitled though it must be. Now that the old landmarks had to some extent been swept away, there followed a general and tumultuous scramble in the debris, each being anxious to secure all that was possible, or failing, to resent the affront of another’s success.