Chapter 1 of 21 · 3914 words · ~20 min read

Part 1

TAR AND FEATHERS

An Entrancing Post-War Romance in which the

KU KLUX KLAN

Its Principles and Activities Figure Prominently

Based on Fact

BY VICTOR RUBIN

THIRD EDITION

1924 UNIVERSAL PRESS 409, 163 Washington Street Chicago, Ill.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CRAFTSMEN PRINTERS, CHICAGO [Illustration: 406]

FOREWORD

Let us reason together. What proof have we that the people of one race are better or to be considered with favor above those of another?

It is true there was a time when the word “stranger” or its equivalent in other languages than the English had the same meaning as enemy. Each savage tribe, the early ancestors of all civilized peoples, for want of knowledge and experience, considered all other tribes enemies, and even as civilization grew and boundaries began to be established an imaginary line made enemies of those dwelling on opposite sides of rivers and channels. With more reason, seas came to be recognized as territorial limitations, and it has required centuries to break down notions of enmity and antagonism between dwellers of different localities. Indeed, it can hardly be contended that this spirit of enmity and antagonism has been overcome, when we see not only peoples of different countries, but those of a common citizenship harboring animosities sometimes approaching the malignant, and giving expression both in speech and action to their hatred for those who differ from them in race or color or creed.

Victor Rubin in the following pages deals with this question of racial and religious antagonism in a fascinating but most effective manner. Perhaps no one will be able to speak more impressively of Mr. Rubin’s book “TAR AND FEATHERS” and at the same time give an intimation of its contents than has the great scholar and traveler, Israel Zangwill:

“Mr. Victor Rubin, with the courage of youth, faces in his first novel the full blast of the actual. What Mr. C. E. Montague’s fine book, Disenchantment, expresses for the British soldier, Mr. Rubin’s Tar and Feathers expresses for the American. All America--of all creeds and races--went to the great war as one man, as depicted in Tar and Feathers. The young Southerner, Hamilton, has actually been dragged from death on the battlefield by a negro and brought back to life and health by a Jewish surgeon. Yet the cannon have scarcely cooled before the old racial and religious prejudices reassert themselves. They resurge even in Hamilton, who cannot bear to touch the colored hand of his saviour. It is his struggle with them, and his final mastery over them, that constitutes the theme of Mr. Rubin’s novel. When Hamilton goes back to his narrow Southern home, he even under the pressure of the milieu becomes a paid agent of the Ku Klux Klan with its crusade against Catholics, Jews and Negroes.” (Mr. Rubin prudently calls it the “Trick, Track Tribe.”)

That the book possesses a broad appeal is indicated by many other commendations of able readers as expressed in scores of periodicals, a few of which we quote:

“A cogent, common-sense appeal for liberality of view, for a realization that all humanity is intrinsically similar, that the great teachers of mankind all breathed love and unity ... a book which any man concerned with the interesting presentment of truth would do well to read.”--William R. Langfeld in the _Philadelphia Sunday Record_.

“Mr. Rubin has succeeded in analyzing the psychological effects of the war upon those who participated in it as few writers have done. He has depicted the ethical and moral metamorphosis with commendable accuracy and understanding.”--_Boston Transcript._

“Tar and Feathers is noteworthy in that it protests vigorously against prejudice of every variety and exposes the narrowness and the danger of organizations making for racial antagonism. The author writes with sincerity and conviction and is worth heeding if only for the vehemence with which he attacks the forces of snobbery and prejudice.”--_New York Evening Post._

“While the armistice bells are ringing and a war-ridden people all over the world are shaking themselves loose from the habits of four long years, the novel opens in a crowded ward of the American hospital, Rue de Saint Jacques, Paris. Robert Hamilton, a rich and cultured American from Georgia; McCall from Chicago, in civilian life a reporter on the Times (incidentally of the Catholic faith); Dr. Levin, the great American surgeon, and Williams, a negro graduate of Harvard, are here introduced. Of course, there is also Meadows, the nurse--Dorothy Meadows, who played around with the social service crowd at Madison, and graduated there some time “before the war.” Back in Georgia is Margaret, a typical “home girl” in Corinth. These are the leading characters out of whose reactions Mr. Rubin has evolved a presentable story upon which to drape his theories.

“The scene shifts back to Corinth, where young Hamilton, is at once entangled in the affairs of the Ku Klux Klan, tho he doesn’t know in the least what it’s all about. Sent on a mission of propaganda to Chicago, Hamilton renews his friendship with McCall and Levin. The story of the part they play is a sermon to be hugged to the hearts of all 100 per cent Americans. Then, of course, there is Dorothy ... while back in Corinth is Margaret ... staying at home.

“Mr. Rubin makes adroit use of the Chicago race riots of 1919 and otherwise molds his men and his times into a tale which moves with rapidity and vigor.”--Margaret Evans in the _Chicago Evening Post_.

For ourselves, we have read nothing on the perennial subject of intolerance so much to the point and so well calculated to allay prejudice and make for good citizenship as “TAR AND FEATHERS.”

THE PUBLISHERS.

Tar and Feathers

Monday, November 11, 1918, in Paris. A world suddenly gone mad. Shouting and dancing in the streets. Blaring of bands in the public squares. Booming of cannon along the Seine. Ringing of bells. Swirling masses of human beings along the boulevards and bridges and upon the steps of public buildings. Color. Autumn trees aflame with gold. Men and women blown about like autumn leaves. A sea of people, tossing sprays of color--red caps of officers, sky-blue uniforms, yellow hair of dancing women, ribbons, waving flags and banners. Spots of black--women in mourning, laughing and crying at once, singing through tears. Shouts of _vive la France_! Singing of the Marseillaise. Incoherent laughter and singing and cries, forming a rhythmic pattern like the pulsing of sea waves.

Peace at last. The world made safe for democracy--for France, for England, for Italy, for Belgium, for America--for the smallest nations of the earth--for white men, for yellow men, for black men.

At the Chamber of Deputies, Premier Clemenceau, faultlessly attired and gloved, tells the French people that the greatest war of all time has come to an end--Clemenceau, who nearly fifty years before as a member of this same assembly, voted against surrender to Germany. As his proud, clear voice rings out, the guns of victory roar a distant accompaniment. Wild applause greets his reading of the terms of the armistice, especially marked at those paragraphs dealing with the return of the lost provinces of Alsace-Lorraine, the abandonment of submarine warfare, the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine.

For once there are no political factions in the Chamber. For once lefts, rights and centers applaud and cheer as one. Even the Socialists are among those to surround the Premier as he leaves the platform, and congratulate him. Some one begins the Marseillaise. Immediately applause, laughter and cheering are hushed. The Deputies stand erect and sing in unison the hymn of the French Republic. The vast crowd which has been thronging the galleries and corridors takes it up. It is carried to the hundreds massed on the stairs and perched on the railings. From group to group, as far as one can see, the song is carried along the current of exultant humanity. Men and women fox-trotting in the public squares and dancing in circles pause to sing. Then back to their dancing. Another circle farther on takes up the hymn. And so it goes, from the House of Deputies to the boulevards, and along the boulevards to the bridges. From the Bastille to the Madeleine, down Rue Royale to the great corral of captured German guns in the Place de la Concorde, up the Champs Elysées, on and on and on. It is Paris triumphant.

Other nations take up the Marseillaise, sing it and their national anthems--the Star-Spangled Banner, God Save the King.

British soldiers on leave begin a procession and go shouting and singing down the boulevard. Columns of Americans, French and Belgians follow their example. Women throw themselves into the arms of the marching soldiers, kiss them and are off again. At the Elysée Palace the procession halts just long enough to sing the national anthems of the allied nations, in succession, and marches on.

Crowded motor busses and other vehicles find every highway blocked, and the passengers dismount and join the throngs. Men and women who have never met before join hands, embrace, kiss, dance and sing. Every public square, the street before every outdoor café, the great hall of St. Lazarre station--yesterday the receiving station of the wounded--become dance halls.

On the steps of L’Opera a Scotch band is blaring. It is one of a hundred bands playing simultaneously.

There is a deluge of wine. Countless bottles are uncorked or impatiently cracked open at the cafés. Men and women dart down the streets brandishing bottles and sharing their contents with others. American soldiers forget the regulation against liquor.

They forget another regulation--General Order 40, forbidding colored men to talk to French women. The French have not learned to draw the color line. French midinettes and society women join hands with the colored men who have saved France, as freely as with the whites. An aristocratic Parisienne embraces an Alabama negro, while the latter grins good-naturedly, and the celebrators form a circle about the two.

“They’d sure lynch him for that,” sneers another Alabama soldier, white, with a scowl, as he leans tipsily against the railing of La Madeleine. It is the one note of discord in the otherwise perfect harmony of the moment.

“I say,” his voice rises petulantly, “they’d lynch him--” But the men in uniform about him are English, French, Italian. Can’t explain a thing like that to Tommies, Frog-eaters or Wops. Probably wouldn’t know what lynching meant anyway. And they treated niggers like white people.

But he forgets his resentment when a girl with dancing black eyes grasps his hand and that of one of his French colleagues and begins dancing down the street with them.

Out of the gathering twilight, stars of light suddenly flare--electric lights, search-lights, gas lights, lanterns. Paris, which has lived in darkness for four years, suddenly bursts into an orgy of colored lights--glitters like an enchanted city.

Into the city of lights and shadows, the sea of exultant humanity, they drift. They are part of the city, of the world suddenly grown mad with joy. Throughout France other men and women are celebrating like this. In England, in America, in Italy, in Belgium. Peace. Victory. The end of Tyranny. Freedom for all!

Of all this, Robert Hamilton, first lieutenant of infantry, was unaware.

In a crowded ward of the American hospital, on Rue de Saint Jacques, he was just emerging from ether. High explosive had shattered one of his ribs and had come within an ace of sending the jagged bone into his heart. A skilful surgeon had cut away bits of bone, substituted a plate of silver and stitched the skin back again. Of this also, Hamilton, of course, knew nothing. His last memory was of leading a wave toward a trench. Running ahead of the wave, running at a dog trot, with a rifle held at high port across his body, running through mud and shell holes, running into a grotesquely lighted night, with lights and rockets that screamed overhead and exaggerated every irregularity of the ground, that sent ghastly shadows staggering across the field and outlined the opposing trenches. Running, still running.

In the back of Hamilton’s brain something burned--a light, a flame, a pain, an idea. It was all that lived of that complex being--Hamilton. It was all that lived of his hopes and fears, his loves and prejudices, his habits and thoughts. A childhood in Corinth, a youth at prep school, four years of training at Harvard, generations of culture, all lay concentrated in a little feeble flame that was flickering, flickering.

The flame grew outward and shattered into other flames. The light expanded, throbbing. The pain grew sharper. Hamilton was beginning to think. Before he had simply been conscious of his existence.

Now he was running forward again through the grotesquely lighted field of battle. Running, running, with rockets and Verey lights and flames forming a pattern in his brain.

Then sounds throbbing through his consciousness--forming another pattern. Cries, shouts, the booming of cannon, the whirring of shells and unseen wings, singing.

Then his brain reeling around.

Flames searing his breast.

Hamilton’s eyes fluttered open to a white ceiling. He became aware of a sickeningly sweetish odor of ether. His eyes closed. He was back in the gray world, with its weird, screaming lights. Running, running. He was falling, with bayonets flashing out of the shadows and tearing at his chest.

“Get ’em! Get ’em! God! They got me. Sergeant!”

His eyes fluttered open again. Eyes were resting on his bewilderingly.

“What? Where am I?”

Soft hands were patting him.

“Where are you, sergeant? All right, bombers! Get ’em! Get ’em! Damn!”

Hamilton was conscious. The pain had concentrated in a single place in his chest. He saw a surgeon and a nurse in white bending over him. He knew that he was in a hospital. He heard the nurse’s low voice consoling him:

“You’re all right, now. A few days and you’ll be sitting up.”

The surgeon was giving her instructions. Then he was moving away to the next bed. Hamilton was noticing the long room, crowded with white beds and the orderlies hurrying about. Through the long row of tall windows the bright autumn sun was shining.

“What’s the noise?”

“The armistice’s been signed.”

“What?”

“The war’s over!” The nurse was patting his forehead.

“What? The war--over?” He was struggling vainly to get up, his will sending the blood into his emaciated muscles and tensing them. For a moment his eyes, glancing through the window to the world outside--saw the sea of frenzied men and women, dancing, singing, laughing, weeping, shouting. Then he sank back again to his pillow, suddenly white, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“War’s over! War’s over!” he repeated in a choked voice.

His brain whirled with emotions. Joy that the war was over, that danger and hardships were at an end, that he would be able to return home--home and Margaret. Somewhere was a faint shadow of regret that the war had not lasted long enough for him to have won his captaincy. His grandfather had been a captain in the Confederate army. Two ancestors had been captains in Washington’s army. Hamilton had been brought up in the fighting tradition and in the officer tradition. And he had been recommended for promotion by his battalion commander.

Hamilton’s eyes swept the room. Several of the other patients were standing at the windows, looking down upon the crowded streets. Others were sitting up in bed or in armchairs. The rest were lying back, like himself, evidently too ill to sit up. He turned his head and watched the faces. On the next bed lay a bundle of bandages. It was moving slowly. Hamilton watched fascinatedly. He caught a glimpse of his face, and turned even paler. Then his face flushed angrily.

“Nurse, nurse!” His voice rose shrilly. “There’s a skunk in here.”

“What?”

“A skunk! Look over there! In that next bed.”

With strength borne of rage, Hamilton half sat up and pointed a gaunt finger at the bandaged figure in the next bed.

“What’s that damn nigger doing here?”

Miss Meadows’ lips smiled, but there was an angry flash in her brown eyes.

“The negro ward was filled and--”

“Why didn’t you put him in the hall, in the basement, anywhere?”

The lips still smiled.

“And we thought you wouldn’t mind if we put him next to you because--”

Hamilton was silent with rage.

“Because he was the man who saved your life.”

III

When Dr. Levin returned later that day to change the dressing, he found Hamilton still asleep. He was also asleep the next day; but the third time, Dr. Levin found him awake, his dark eyes fluttering restlessly about the ward, like caged birds.

Hamilton, Dr. Levin decided, might be twenty-five or twenty-six, an athlete and a person of social position--analyzing people who came under his observation was one of the surgeon’s hobbies. Weeks of unconsciousness had left Hamilton pale and weak, but there was an appearance of strength in his restless eyes and firm, ambitious lips. His nose was slightly arched and the bridge at the highest point a trifle thick as though it had once been broken; his jaws broad, but tapering to a pointed cynical chin; his brow high and narrow; his eyebrows thick without being shaggy--one of them was scarred. A compromise between the intellectual and the physical, Levin thought. He might have made the Harvard football team or Phi Beta Kappa, depending on his inclinations.

As a matter of fact, Hamilton had not made Phi Beta Kappa, although he had come comfortably near it, and had made the football team--trying out for it only on the insistence of a physical training instructor after he had watched Hamilton for a few minutes on the wrestling mat.

Hamilton believed thoroughly in the old Greek ideal of a sound mind in a sound body, but he held no exaggerated idea of the importance of his ability to tuck a leather ball under his arm and hammer his way through a line of opposing men. He burned no incense at the altar of his egoism as he had seen so many other football heroes do and he expected no tribute. He enjoyed the game for its own sake--the nervous expectation, the united purpose to win, the quick strategy, the unexpected opposition, the physical clash, the tug and strain of muscles, the smell of keen autumn air and of blood and leather. But football was only a game--only part of his carefully planned scheme of education. It helped provide the sound body.

His studies were the studies that a gentleman of leisure of the old school might select for his son, with a few allowances for modern standards. He had pursued the study of Greek, for instance, only through Homer and of Latin through Horace. He had taken the minimum science requirement, a single year of physics, and had then gone in for contemporary literature and history. He had chosen French for his foreign language. These studies he had sprinkled with a few courses here and there in fine arts, psychology and philosophy. Some were admittedly cinch courses. He applied himself to these with reasonable zeal, without, at the same time, endangering his social position by being mistaken for a grind. He was giving himself a foundation not so much for the establishment of a career, but for the enjoyment of life.

As the son and heir of Robert E. Hamilton, owner of extensive cotton plantations, cotton mills and hardwood forests in Georgia, Robert, jr., had no particular need to establish a career, and, although literature attracted him, he preferred to enjoy rather than to try to produce it.

“There are too many writers already,” Hamilton would say. “What we need are more persons who can distinguish between good and bad writing. We need a larger dilettante class, for the sake of the writers themselves, and as I have no real inspiration I might as well belong to the dilettantes.”

This might have been either a streak of laziness or of candor. Or again it might have been only the result of his peculiar conception of aristocracy.

Hamilton was aristocratic as only a thorough Democrat can be--that is a Southern Democrat. And his ideas came by heredity. He believed, first, in the absolute supremacy of the white race, as distinguished from the colored races; second, of the Anglo-Saxon as distinguished from the rest of the Caucasian race; third, of the residents south of the Mason and Dixon line, as distinguished from the rest of the Anglo-Saxons; and fourth, of the Hamiltons. Although he no longer attended church regularly, he was a firm believer in God--a deity not unlike the oil paintings of the ancestral Hamilton, who had received the grant from Oglethorpe--only infinitely more powerful and grand. Hamilton’s God was a god of the cotton plantations and the mills, although Hamilton himself would have been the first person to deny it. His voice was heard in the thunder and His rain made the cotton plants to grow. His hand could be seen ruling the waters and turning the wheels of the cotton mills. His anger flashed in the lightning and was seen in the uprisings of white men to stamp out transgressions of His law.

Yet it was a just God and a beneficent one; for though it had been God who had created the different races and classes and who had destined some to rule and others to be ruled, He gave to all alike the beauty of sunsets and sunrises, of misty mountain peaks, of majestic expanses of ocean, of flowers and forests. And He allowed the rain to fall alike on the highest white man in His caste, and upon the lowliest black.

At college Hamilton’s conceptions had broadened sufficiently for him to admit that all of God’s people were not concentrated south of the Mason-Dixon line--though they might be more thickly settled there.

His first contact with theories of evolution advanced fifty years ago, but new to him, for a time threatened to shake his belief in the god of the clan, but eventually he absorbed the new teachings and catalogued them as part of the inscrutable plan, the mysterious ways in which God moved His wonders to perform.

All this sounds very ponderous for a young man at the threshold of life. As a matter of fact, these concepts played but a small part in his actual life. He was fond of outdoor sports, tennis and golf, had gone on several fishing trips in northern Maine with a Harvard chum, and was a fair horseman. He had belonged to an exclusive club at Harvard and held a membership in the best club in Corinth. He attended all the dances in his set, sometimes led a cotillion, flirted lightly with the belles, took them motoring, was the life of house-parties and had a reputation as one of the keenest hands at poker in Georgia.

He drank like a gentleman and had an utter contempt for anyone who couldn’t. Women liked him naturally, because he was tall and athletic, conversed interestingly and could make love--of the mock variety--delightfully. But he had never carried his mild philanderings to the dangerous stage--far less violated the code that holds a woman’s honor inviolate--_in his own set_.