THE spirit of anarchy was in the tainted air. The bonds that held society were loosened. Government threatened to become organised crime instead of the organised virtue of the community.

The report of crimes of unusual horror among the ignorant and the vicious began now to startle the world.

The Rev. John Durham on his rounds among the poor discovered a little negro boy whom the parents had abandoned to starve. His father had become a drunken loafer at Independence and the Freedman’s Bureau delivered the child to his mother and her sister who lived in a cabin about two miles from Hambright, and ordered them to care for the boy.

A few days later the child had disappeared. A search was instituted, and the charred bones were found in an old ash heap in the woods near this cabin. The mother had knocked him in the head and burned the body in a drunken orgie with dissolute companions.

The sense of impending disaster crushed the hearts of thoughtful and serious people. One of the last acts of Governor Macon, whose office was now under the control of the military commandant at Charleston, South Carolina, was to issue a proclamation, appointing a day of fasting and prayer to God for deliverance from the ruin that threatened the state under the dominion of Legree and the negroes.

It was a memorable day in the history of the people.

In many places they met in the churches the night before, and held all-night watches and prayer meetings. They felt that a pestilence worse than the Black Death of the Middle Ages threatened to extinguish civilisation.

The Baptist church at Hambright was crowded to the doors with white-faced women and sorrowful men.

About ten o’clock in the morning, pale and haggard from a sleepless night of prayer and thought, the Preacher arose to address the people. The hush of death fell as he gazed silently over the audience for a moment. How pale his face! They had never seen him so moved with passions that stirred his inmost soul. His first words were addressed to God. He did not seem to see the people before him.

“Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

“Before the mountains were brought forth or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God!”

The people instinctively bowed their heads, fired by the subtle quality of intense emotion the tones of his voice communicated, and many of the people were already in tears.

“Thou turnest man to destruction: and sayest, return, ye children of men.”

“Who knowest the power of thine anger?”

“Return, O Lord, how long? and let it repent Thee concerning Thy servants.”

“Beloved,” he continued, “it was permitted unto your fathers and brothers and children to die for their country. You must live for her in the black hour of despair. There will be no roar of guns, no long lines of gleaming bayonets, no flash of pageantry or martial music to stir your souls.

“You are called to go down, man by man, alone, naked and unarmed in the blackness of night and fight with the powers of hell for your civilisation.

“You must look this question squarely in the face. You are to be put to the supreme test. You are to stand at the judgment bar of the ages and make good your right to life. The attempt is to be deliberately made to blot out Anglo-Saxon society and substitute African barbarism.

“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, haule............