“And the storm is coming up the heavens. The lightning is being stored, and the tempest of hail, the burning lightning, and deafening thunder peals are awaiting this day of wrath when the storm shall burst. “And you sit on in your ease and will not believe it.” His eyes wuz bent on my pardner’s form, who wuz leanin’ back in a almost luxurious attitude in his soft copper-plate-covered rockin’ chair, but I see he didn’t mean him in particeler; no, his eyes had in ’em a wide, deep look that took in the hull country, North and South, and he went on in almost eloquent axents: “The Northern soldier who twenty-five years ago hung up his old rifle and powder-horn with a sigh of content that the war against oppression and slavery had been won still sits under them in content and self-admiration of his prowess, and heeds not at all the signs in the heavens. “And the wise men in the National Capital sit peacefully in their high places and read over complacently the words they wrote down a quarter of a century ago: “‘All slaves are free.’ “And the bandage that Justice wears, having slipped too far down over their wise eyes, they have not seen the handcuffs and chains that have weighed down the still enslaved. “And they read these words: “‘We proclaim peace in all your borders.’ “And lost in triumphant thoughts of what they had done, they did not heed this truth, that instead of peace hovering down upon the borders of the fair Southern land, they had blindly and ignorantly, no doubt, let loose the bitter, corroding, wearing curse of animosity and ignorant misrule. “Yes, those wise men had launched these turbulent spirits instead of peace on the heads of the free and enlightened, if bigoted white people of the South, and upon the black race. “And never stopped to think, so it would seem, whether three millions strong of an ignorant, superstitious, long-degraded people, the majority of whom could not read nor write, and were ignorant of the first principles of truth and justice, could suddenly be lifted up to become the peers, and in many cases the superiors, of a cultured and refined people who had had long ages of culture and education behind them, and, above all, class prejudices. “They never paused to ask themselves whether it was in reality just to the white race, or whether this superior class would quietly submit to the legal equality and rule of the inferior. “The difficulty of this problem did not seem to strike them, whether by any miracle the white race would at once forget its pride and its prejudices. “Whether by a legal enactment a peacock could be made to change its plumage for the sober habit of a dove, or an eagle develop the humility of a snail. “The wise men expected to do more than this, and failed. “And they never seemed to ponder this side of the question: Whether it was not cruelty to the weaker class to thus raise up to a greater strength the prejudice and animosity of the dominant race.