And out in Illinois a homely state legislator named Abraham Lincoln was saying that it is “the sacred right of the people ... to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.... It is the quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones.” Part III _THE STORM_ When the measure of their tears shall be full--when their groans shall have involved heaven itself in darkness--doubtless a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by his exterminating thunder manifest his attention to the things of this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of a blind fatality. --THOMAS JEFFERSON CHAPTER ELEVEN _The storm came up in the West and birds flew North_ There never had been such a time for cotton. All over the South the cotton foamed in great white flakes under the sun. Black workers staggered beneath its weight. Up and down the roads straining mules pulled wagons loaded with bubbling masses of whiteness. The gins spat flames and smoke; the presses creaked and groaned, as closer and closer they packed the quivering mass until, dead and still, it lay in hard, square bundles on river wharves, beside steel rails and on rotting piers. Shiploads were on their way to the hungry looms of England and the crawling harbors of China. Prosperity lay like a fragrant mist upon the Southland in 1854. William Freeland rode over his acres with satisfaction. True, they had diminished in number; but if cotton prices continued to rise, the master of Freelands could see years of ease stretching ahead. Since his mother’s death Freeland had left the running of the plantation pretty much to hired overseers. He had not interfered. He spent a lot of time in Baltimore, Washington and Richmond. With his dark brooding face and wavy, gray-streaked hair, the master of Freelands enjoyed much popularity with the ladies. He remained a bachelor.