“A few years ago a Southern Representative in a stupid rage knocked Charles Sumner down with a cane and cracked his skull. Now it is this poor cracked brain, mad with hate and revenge, that is attempting to blot the Southern states from the map of the world and build Negro territories on their ruins. In the madness of party passions, for the first time in history, an anarchist, Thaddeus Stevens, has obtained the dictatorship of a great Constitutional Government, hauled down its flag and nailed the Black Flag of Confiscation and Revenge to its masthead. “The excuse given for this, that the lawmakers of the South attempted to reinslave the Negro by their enactments against vagrants and provisions for apprenticeship, is so weak a lie, it will not deserve the notice of a future historian. Every law passed on these subjects since the abolition of slavery was simply copied from the codes of the Northern states where free labour was the basis of society. “Lincoln alone, with his great human heart and broad statesmanship could have saved us. But the South had no luck. Again and again in the war, victory was within her grasp, and an unseen hand snatched it away. In the hour of her defeat the bullet of a madman strikes down the great President, her last refuge in ruin! “God alone is our help. Let us hold fast to our faith in Him. We can only cry with aching hearts in the language of the Psalmist of old, ‘How long, O Lord? how long!’ “The voices of three men now fill the world with their bluster--Charles Sumner, a crack-brained theorist; Thad-deus Stevens, a clubfooted misanthrope, and B. F. Butler, a triumvirate of physical and mental deformity. Yet they are but the cracked reeds of a great organ that peals forth the discord of a nation’s blind rage. When the storm is past, and reason rules passion, they will be flung into oblivion. We must bend to the storm. It is God’s will.” The people left the church with heavy hearts. They were hopelessly depressed. In the afternoon, as the churches were being slowly emptied, groups of negroes stood on the corners talking loudly and discussing the meaning of this new Sunday so strangely observed. It began to snow. It was late in March and this was an unusual phenomenon in the South. The next morning the earth was covered with four inches of snow, that glistened in the sun with a strange reddish hue. On examination it was found that every snow drop had in it a tiny red spot that looked like a drop of blood! Nothing of the kind had ever been seen before in the history of the world, so far as any one knew. This freak of nature seemed a harbinger of sure and terrible calamity. Even the most cultured and thoughtful could not shake off the impression it made.