CHAPTER XXXI

Reconstruction-The Bush Arbor Speeches.

T

HE storm of relentless opposition which the military measures of reconstruction aroused all over Georgia just after the war was characterized at no one single moment of time by greater electrical intensity than centered around the famous Bush Arbor meeting in Atlanta on July 23, 1868.

Whatever adjectives are needed to describe the occasion are fully implied in the statement that Robert Toombs, Howell Cobb, Benjamin H. Hill and Raphael J. Moses were the speakers, while the targets at which were aimed most of the flaming arrows of this never-to-be-forgotten hour in Georgia were the military satraps who brooded like bats in uniforms among the ruins of constitutional law and order.

The oratorical elements were all ready for combination and the result was such an occasion as Georgia can never forget. Impassioned eloquence expressed itself in terrible denunciations and withering invectives. It seemed almost as if divine wrath itself was awakened by the unrighteous military usurpation which had hurled to the ground the broken tablets of the law of Georgia, and that around the foreheads of the men who voiced the

protest of an outraged commonwealth were wreathed the very Jehovah lightnings of Mount Sinai.

Nor was such an unparalleled scene in the annals of Georgia without an adequate explanation. It is barely possible that mute and meek submission in the earlier stages of the nightmare might have mitigated in some measure the horrors of reconstruction; but the proudspirited race of people who had plucked from England the victorious rose of Yorktown could hardly be expected to endure in silence the defeat-embittered thorn of Appomattox. Yet even the pang of Confederate failure and disappointment could have been lightly endured had it been less bitterly reinforced with the gall and wormwood of reconstruction. It was enough to dethrone the empurpled patience of the man of Uz to contemplate the havoc which the invaders made of vested rights and privileges which had long been held inviolate. But what was the actual status of affairs? The sovereignty of Georgia lay prostrate. The carpet-bagger and the former slave, upheld by the bayonets of the military power, were in full control of the political machinery; while the great mass of the Anglo-Saxon population were bowed beneath the yoke of an Egyptian bondage. To have been heroically silent under these torturing circumstances might have honored the philosophy of Socrates, but it could hardly have ratified the principles of Jefferson embodied in freedom's great charter: the Declaration of Independence.

Such was the political reign of terror in the midst of which the Bush Arbor speeches were delivered on one of the warmest days of mid-summer in the presence of an audience of twenty thousand enthusiastic Georgians. Unmindful of the hot weather, which was zero-temperature

compared with the furnace-breath which blistered the backs of the reconstructionists, the multitudes sat spellbound under the canopy of boughs for more than five hours, listening to such oratory as men have seldom heard in ancient or modern times.

Dr. James F. Alexander, one of the most patriotic citizens and one of the most successful physicians of Georgia, was chairman of the committee of arrangements; and the famous bush arbor, which was erected because there was no auditorium in Atlanta large enough to accommodate the expected crowds, was located near the site of the old passenger depot, where it was convenient to those coming in on the trains as well as to those living in town. The first presidential campaign since the war closed was just now opening. Seymour and Blair were the Democratic candidates; and it was largely in the interest of these standard-bearers of the party that the meeting was held.

It was anticipated that such an expression of protest on the part of the suffering people of Georgia might materially aid the cause of Democracy, not only by rallying the hosts at home but by enlisting the sympathies of all lovers of popular government and fair play throughout the Union.

The presence of General Toombs upon the platform was hailed with peculiar interest. This veteran hero of resistance who had fired the opening guns and received the earliest scars of secession had just returned home after more than two years of foreign exile and had doggedly and persistently refused to bend the knee of allegiance to

the United States government. He stood before the public divested of the rights of citizenship, but he bore an armor which recalled the laurels of many an illustrious tournament and which, exhibiting the hall-mark of the disinherited, told that the champion was the old Confederate Knight of Ivanhoe.

Stepping to the front amid the wildest demonstrations of applause, General Toombs soon convinced the audience that while he had been traveling in foreign lands when the flag of resistance to reconstruction was first raised, he was now ready to join the ranks with characteristic ardor. His voice rang with the same well-known accents. His eyes flashed with the same familiar fires. He was the same old Robert Toombs.

"That," said the speaker, "is a bright page in Roman history which narrates that when thousands of her most gallant and distinguished youths were slain and the victorious enemy was marching upon her capital with nothing to retard his progress but a stern old warrior and patriot whose chief resource lay in his unconquerable will, the Roman Senate met and first ordered propitiatory sacrifices to the gods, and then voted the thanks of Rome to the defeated leader of her armies for not despairing of the republic. From that hour the star of Hannibal culminated from the equator. The people imbibed the spirit of the conscript fathers; courage and hope drove out fear and despair; and Rome was saved."

With this note of encouragement the speaker next proceeded to assail the military despotism of reconstruction. in Georgia, which he declared to be violative of all the codes of justice: the Magna Charta, the Constitution of the United States, the laws of nations and the rights of

man. He characterized the political machinery of reconstruction as "a pyramid of iniquity" and the dominant party in Georgia as a floating mass of putrescence which rose while it rotted and rotted while it rose.

He branded the whole order of things under the military administration as incompetent, corrupt, fraudulent and treacherous. General Toombs advocated the claims of the Demócratic candidates and closed by urging the Democrats of the State to bestir themselves in the campaign which had now opened. "Take no counsel of fear," said he. "Fear is the meanest of masters. Spurn the temptations of office and gold from the polluted hands of your oppressors. He who holds only his own sepulchre as the price of these chains owns a heritage of shame. All honor to the National Democracy which has risen to strike these fetters from your limbs. They have opened wide the portals of admission. Forgetting all past differences of opinion they invite all to unite in the present great struggle for the liberties of the people. Come, unite with them. Your country says come-honor says come-duty says comeliberty says come. Your country is in danger. Let every freeman hasten to the rescue."

This dramatic appeal fired the vast audience to the very highest pitch of enthusiasm. The oratorical standard was now planted among the clouds. Could the other distinguished speakers upon the platform mount to such dizzy altitudes? Another tumultuous outburst of applause greeted Howell Cobb who now calmly arose to begin in measured accents an appeal of eloquence which was literally to close in equinoctial thunder. It was not known at