“I’ll do the best I can for you Doctor, but I can’t control the camp followers who are organising the Union League. They live a charmed life.” That night, as the Preacher walked home from a visit to a destitute family he encountered a burly negro on the sidewalk, dressed in an old suit of Federal uniform, evidently under the influence of whiskey. He wore a belt around his waist, in which he had thrust, conspicuously, an old horse pistol. Standing squarely across the pathway, he said to the Preacher, “Git outer de road, white man, you’se er rebel, I’se er Loyal Union Leaguer!” It was his first experience with Negro insolence since the emancipation of his slaves. Quick as a flash, his right arm was raised. But he took a second thought, stepped aside, and allowed the drunken fool to pass. He went home wondering in a hazy sort of way through his excited passions what the end of it all would be. Gradually in his mind for days this towering figure of the freed Negro had been growing more and more ominous, until its menace overshadowed the poverty, the hunger, the sorrows and the devastation of the South, throwing the blight of its shadow over future generations, a veritable Black Death for the land and its people. CHAPTER IV--MR. LINCOLN’S DREAM EVERY morning before the Preacher could finish his breakfast, callers were knocking at the door--the negro, the poor white, the widow, the orphan, the wounded, the hungry, an endless procession. The spirit of the returned soldiers was all that he could ask. There was nowhere a slumbering spark of war. There was not the slightest effort to continue the lawless habits of four years of strife. Everywhere the spirit of patience, self-restraint and hope marked the life of the men who had made the most terrible soldiery. They were glad to be done with war, and have the opportunity to rebuild their broken fortunes. They were glad, too, that the everlasting question of a divided Union was settled and settled forever. There was now to be one country and one flag, and deep down in their souls they were content with it. The spectacle of this terrible army of the Confederacy, the memory of whose battle cry yet thrills the world, transformed in a month into patient and hopeful workmen, has never been paralleled in history. Who destroyed this scene of peaceful rehabilitation? Hell has no pit dark enough, and no damnation deep enough for these conspirators when once history has fixed their guilt.