“It’ll blow over.”
“You’re always so sure about things. What if it don’t?”
“Course it will. They’ve got an election to win. Congress, the statehouse, all those county offices. They can’t have civil disorder.” “Ain’t that the whole point? The election?”
“Let’s boil up a pot of coffee. We can figure this thing out.”
In Hugh MacRae’s basement dining room on Market Street, nine men were gathered around a mahogany table. They had been talking since midnight. There was much to discuss, and this was a good place to discuss it. The dining room was accessible from an outside door beneath the front porch.
The house itself was a fortress, built of fieldstone and gray stuccoed brick to resemble a castle, complete with rooftop battlements and an ivy-covered turret. The walls were a foot and a half thick. The lot was a full city block, fenced by high wrought-iron spikes set into granite footings. On granite standards at intervals along the fence burned electric security lights. The Princess Street side was closed off by a nine-foot-high brick wall.
“I was standing in the middle of Market Street—not fifty yards from my front door—conversing with a business associate.” MacRae was telling the story of how he had finally decided enough was enough. “This gentleman was down from Raleigh. He had gone to the courthouse on a legal matter that morning and had to ask the nigger janitor for directions to the judge’s chambers. Do you know that nigger spoke to him in the familiar?”
They nodded. They’d all heard this story before, enough to wonder if it were even true. But it confirmed them in their purpose.
“This gentleman was flabbergasted. Right there in the street, he was telling me, ‘Our niggers address us with some respect.’ Just then, a dray came barreling down toward the wharf, a nigger driving. Now, he had plenty of room to go to one side of us or t’other. Point is, he aimed right down the middle of the road. We were forced to leap for safety.”
They nodded, murmured their disgust.
“Leap to safety, gentlemen. Point is, that nigger driver forced us to take action.” He smiled. “Maybe that boy did us a favor, after all. We are here tonight to contemplate just exactly what action we are going to take. And I can assure you, gentlemen,” he said, looking around for effect, “the one action we will not take is to leap for safety.”
“Hear, hear.”
MacRae served the bourbon himself, out of the bottle, and set a crystal pitcher of well water on the sideboard for any man who needed a mixer. It was best to leave the servants out of this. His wife, Rena, and little Dorothy, going on seven, were asleep upstairs. He was doing this for them.
“So Rountree isn’t coming at all? Doesn’t George want to be in on this?” The question came from J. Allan Taylor. The others were owners of stores and livery stables, lumber companies and banks, wholesale firms and real-estate consortiums.
MacRae trimmed his second cigar of the evening. Vices were all right, among gentlemen. “Won’t join us officially. Prefers to stay in the shadows. Feels he can be more useful that way.”
L. B. Sasser, the druggist, said, “George will keep his mouth shut. That’s his business. He’s working the Raleigh end.”
MacRae nodded. They’d spent the evening going over logistics. Using the thirty-two plat-maps completed by Sanborn-Perris in April for insurance bonding, they’d divided the city into sections, each with a captain to be named in the coming weeks. Each section was further broken down into blocks. On each block was designated a “stronghouse”—a physically invulnerable structure with a telephone.
The plats were color-coded according to structure: the stronghouses were all red—brick.
When the trouble started, the fire bells of the four white companies would ring simultaneously. Each block warden would set up headquarters in his stronghouse and wait by the telephone for orders from his section captain. Meanwhile, his men would gather all the women and children in the neighborhood and march them under protective guard to the stronghouse. Squads of militia would then evacuate them from each stronghouse and escort them to First Baptist Church at Fifth and Market, next door to the Wilmington Light Infantry Armory. Both buildings could hold out against any attack not supported by artillery.
J. Allan Taylor, MacRae’s section-captain liaison, would transmit the orders of the Secret Nine to the captains. That way, if things went awry, they would not know the identities of the other eight men in this room. Taylor was pleased. Now, instead of just poring over endless balance sheets in a dreary office, he would be out in the open air maneuvering among other men of action. He couldn’t wait for it to begin.
But they all knew it must wait until the election.
“Solly Fishblate wants in,” L. B. Sasser said. “He’s been asking around, knows something’s up.”
MacRae said, “He’s part of the reason we’re in this mess. If he’d shown more backbone as mayor … Anyhow, we don’t need any Jews. This is Anglo-Saxon business.”
“He’s got some pull with the Dry Ponders. And the Red Shirts.”
“We’ll see. Maybe later. But not yet.”
“What about Waddell?” J. Allan Taylor said. “Rountree mentioned him.”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” MacRae said. “We can’t let everybody in. The whole project depends on discretion. A limited number of hand-picked men pursuing well-defined objectives.”
Except for the Board of Audit and Finance, the city government was being run by Fusionists—Republicans united with Populists. The Redeemer Democrats had to carry the county and state elections, the first step in canceling out the power of the Fusionist Board of Aldermen. The Fusionist crowd was hostile to business. They blocked tax incentives and railroad bonds. They were strangling the financial arteries of capitalism.
Once the election was won, they could make their move on the city.
Taylor said, “We could write a lovely role for the old goat.” The others laughed. It would be ironic to use that War of Secession relic to usher in the new century.
“Let me think it over,” MacRae said. “Maybe when it gets closer to the election, if things aren’t hot enough.”
Sasser said, “They’re going to be plenty hot, all right.”
Taylor said, “Do we know where Manly is?”
MacRae laughed. “The joke was on us this time—he really is in New Jersey. Can’t imagine he’ll come back.”
“Then who wrote—?”
“Does it matter? We’ve been baiting that boy for months, and somebody over there finally struck at our worm.” MacRae hooked an index finger into his mouth and yanked, and the men laughed heartily. He finished his fourth bourbon of the evening, more than he usually allowed himself even on special occasions. But tonight he felt a pleasant glow, a lightness of mind and spirit. The camaraderie of men brought together in common cause. Men determined to fight for what they believed in. It stirred the soul just to think about it. He would have just one more. Hell, they were making history here. His ancestors had fought with Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, battled Lord Cornwallis in the Revolution, stood off the Yankee fleet for four bloody years.
He wasn’t going to be deterred by some crackpot social reformers who didn’t understand business. He had a vision for this city.
“We’ll have to get a good route map for the streetcars,” Taylor said through the cigar smoke, “so we can move our people around fast.”
“Right,” MacRae said. “See to it, John.”
“About that other business,” L. B. Sasser said. He wasn’t sure whether to bring it up, but he had to know what to do with it when it arrived.
“A few more weeks,” MacRae said. “George assures me it’s all set. You’ll get instructions about where to put it and so forth.” Sasser nodded.
“The key,” MacRae said, closing his fist slowly, feeling almost military, “is control. Control at every stage of the process. No mob stuff. Keep those damned Red Shirts on a leash.”
Sasser said, “They’re in sympathy wit
h us.”
“Look, I’ll say this just once: the last thing we need is federal intervention. McKinley sends in troops because of civil disorder, we’re finished. The Justice Department will void the election. Order. Control.” He chopped the smoky air slowly with his hand. “Everything done according to plan.” He looked around at their faces, looked each man in the eye. “I don’t have to tell you, gentlemen, that even being here constitutes an act of criminal conspiracy.”
He paused to watch the effect. These were men accustomed to dealing in commodities, not people. This was about people, about human nature, about will. Much less predictable. Hugh MacRae knew people.
Nobody spoke or drank. It was the moment of truth: if it was going to be called off, now was the time. MacRae enjoyed it—the quick shiver of danger, the rank smell of risk. You didn’t get ahead in this man’s world by playing it safe. He sipped his whiskey, the signal for the others to break their solemn tableau.
J. Allan Taylor said, “Before we go, Hugh. Rountree suggests we form a businessmen’s committee. A legitimate body that can work in the open.”
“Good idea. Make George the chairman—he knows the law.”
The men set their glasses on the sideboard and filed toward the door, where MacRae stopped them. “Remember,” he said quietly, “not a word of this to anyone, even your wives. Go out one at a time. Leave a few minutes between.”
For almost half an hour, quick shadows slipped from under the porch and out the iron gate, walking fast down different streets. L. B. Sasser and J. Allan Taylor used the old smugglers’ tunnel under Market Street and came up in front of the Wilmington Light Infantry Armory three blocks away—careful not to slam the passageway door and alert any members playing cards in the club rooms. Pierre Manning, an attorney for the banks, went into the tunnel a little behind them and stayed underground until St. James Church.
Across every back fence between the MacRae mansion and the river, barking dogs alerted the falling moon.
In the basement club rooms of the Wilmington Light Infantry Armory, another meeting was getting under way. Colonel Walker Taylor presided. He had gathered five men he could trust on business so secret he would not confide it even to his own brother, J. Allan Taylor.
Walker Taylor was an immense, balding man with a nose like a beak. His thin hair was plastered across his scalp. He had enormous, dark bug-eyes and a handlebar moustache waxed into ridiculously long dagger points, like a Prussian general. After the War ruined his father, he’d gone to work at fourteen as an office boy for the deRosset & Northrop Insurance Agency. Three years later, he had started his own agency, and it was paying off for him. Their grandfather had built this blockhouse as the family home long before the War. The floors and front façade were Italian marble, white as bone. There was a marble fireplace in every room. Upstairs was the only sunken marble bathtub in the state. The outside walls were English brick imported through Philadelphia, then hauled five hundred miles by ox train. He’d spent almost fifteen thousand dollars—a small fortune in 1824.
Their father, John D. Taylor, had enlisted as a private and risen to a colonel. Returning as the one-armed hero of the Battle of Bentonville, he had discovered that every stick of his property—including this house—had been confiscated by the Yankees. He never got it back. The family home had eventually been acquired by the Light Infantry.
This was the first and last time they would meet here. They would never meet in any location more than once.
The five were businessmen of long standing: Fennell, one of the incumbent aldermen who had refused to give up his seat to the elected Fusionists; Meares, of the Seaboard Air Line, engaged in a tariff war with the farmer Populists; Robertson, superintendent of the Clarendon Waterworks, which was fending off a bid to turn it into a publicly owned utility; Beery, another railroad man; and Smith, an insurance man whose firm had lately taken losses from arson.
They gathered around a kerosene lamp, preferring not to turn on the electric lights. It all seemed more dangerous in the flickering pale of a single lantern.
The light danced against the low brick walls hung with crossed sabers, regimental colors, racks of obsolete muskets from old, glorious wars. A dressmaker’s mannequin in the corner by the fireplace wore the original green dress uniform of the Light Infantry, trimmed with orange and gold. On a nail above it hung the white-plumed hat.
On another wall hung a framed photograph of Captain Donald MacRae, Hugh’s brother, who had commanded the Light Infantry in the Spanish War. They never saw action, just whiled away the war training in Brunswick, Georgia, as Company K, Second Regiment, North Carolina Volunteers.
“I hereby declare this meeting of Group Six open,” Colonel Walker Taylor said crisply in a flat voice that died against the thick walls and low heart-pine ceiling. It was so hot that globules of pitch were bubbling out of the wood. “Come to order.”
He should be presiding over this meeting in the boardroom at city hall, he was thinking. With the Fusionist board under a legal cloud, he had been elected mayor by the Democratic board—the same board Fennell belonged to. But for now, such distinctions were meaningless: he’d heard this morning that the state supreme court was about to validate the Fusionist board, beyond appeal. Wright’s gang, half of them Negroes.
This meeting, however—Group Six—was the beginning of a new order. This was a potent tool for restoring justice, going back to the old values, the traditional ways. He was the leader by acclaim.
The men stopped chatting and listened. “You realize, gentlemen,” Walker Taylor said dramatically, “the risk you take in even coming here. Your reputations, your livelihoods, your freedom.” He paused, turned his bright eyes first on one solemn face, then another. “If we’re caught, if word of what we’re doing ever gets out … That’s the first thing: no one must ever know our names. Not until the thing is finished.” He smiled and leaned over the table. “Not until we’ve won. Then we can march down Market Street behind a brass band!”
“Hear, hear.”
“But if something is to be done, we’re the men who will have to do it.”
“Absolutely.”
“Nobody else.”
Walker Taylor continued, “We cannot have the nigrah politicians running this town any longer. They’re choking us. It’s time to put the finish to Reconstruction.”
“What’s the plan?”
“Preparation, that’s the key. In the event of an uprising, we have to be ready to act at a moment’s notice.”
“This is a big operation, then.”
“We must put certain things in place. We’ll have the element of surprise. The backing of a few good men, loyal men. Men we can count on.”
Beery, of the Atlantic Coast Line, said, “We’ll need money. It’s going to cost.”
Walker Taylor clasped his hands. “I’ve already got a man working on that. Outside man—thought it best not to be formally involved. Doesn’t care to know what we discuss at these meetings. Assures me he can operate with more latitude—legally speaking—from the periphery.”
“We should suggest he form a merchants’ committee. Chaired by a man who shares our views. Doesn’t need to know about Group Six.”
“Exactly,” Walker Taylor said, smoothing a hand over his bald scalp. “A man we can trust completely. A man who knows how to keep secrets. George Rountree.”
Sam Jenks reported to the Messenger office early. It was easy to get to work early these days. Without the cobwebs of a hangover in his eyes and a hammering headache between his ears, the world was clear and pleasant. There was a lucidity about things.
Sometimes, during a long day, there might be moments of panic, when he’d have to duck somewhere and force himself to breathe deeply once, twice, three times. But then he would be in control again. They’d warned him about the panic. Focus on one thing at a time, the doctor had said. Avoid conflicting responsibilities. Don’t go looking for confusing choices. Steer clear of contradiction. It was not a question of whiskey
but of character—so the doctor claimed.
Harry Calabash was nowhere around. Clawson stalked out of his glass cubicle and thrust a sheaf of loose papers into Sam’s hand. “Night man brought these in a couple of hours ago. He was drunk. Give me something by noon.” He was back behind glass before Sam had a chance to wish him good morning.
Sam sloughed off his wool coat. Today, he’d visit a tailor.
He put his feet up on his desk, the nearest one to Harry Calabash’s alcove, and went through the papers. Police reports. Scrawled, half-legible. So now he was a police reporter. One report seemed to be about a break-in—a posse of white neighbors had tracked down a colored man for stealing chickens and silverware. Chickens and silverware? Make up your mind, Sam thought.
Another report said that a Negro deputy sheriff, Ed Bryant, had drawn his gun and threatened a streetcar motorman rather than pay the fare. To Sam, it seemed far-fetched—who would risk losing one of the best jobs in town over a nickel fare? But stranger things had happened. That’s what journalism was, a record of outlandish things that really happened. The whole point was to dare the reader’s credulity: you thought we told you some stupid, crazy, outrageous things yesterday? Well, what do you think of this?
While Sam was still reading, Clawson strode up behind him. “One more thing,” he said. Sam turned his head but did not get up. “There’s a rumor that Manly’s back in town. That he plans to publish again.”
“I’ll check on it.”
“Find out where he is. I want to talk to him.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Clawson.”
Manly back in town? After they’d evicted his newspaper? After Mike Dowling, the Red Shirts’ leader, had vowed to kill him if he ever showed his face again? Now, that was a story worth pursuing. And why did Clawson want to speak to Manly? He couldn’t quite peg Clawson. He was an educated, reasonable man. Negro baiting wasn’t his style. So why was he still running that Manly editorial every day on page one?
Sam rooted through Calabash’s desk until he found a city directory. It listed Manly as residing on McRae Street, up in Brooklyn. But Manly wouldn’t be careless enough to go home. He’d be hiding out in one of those shacks, among his own people, a screen of hard men around him.
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