y settled upon?"

"Well, general, not exactly; but it's the understanding that they will
marry when they are old enough."

"I was merely thinking," the general went on, "that if I were you I'd
speak to Tom about cards and liquor. He gives more time to both than a
young man can afford. I'm speaking in his interest and in Miss
Clara's,--we of the old families ought to stand together."

"Thank you, general, for the hint. I'll act upon it."

This political conference was fruitful in results. Acting upon the plans
there laid out, McBane traveled extensively through the state, working
up sentiment in favor of the new movement. He possessed a certain
forceful eloquence; and white supremacy was so obviously the divine
intention that he had merely to affirm the doctrine in order to secure
adherents.

General Belmont, whose business required him to spend much of the winter
in Washington and New York, lost no opportunity to get the ear of
lawmakers, editors, and other leaders of national opinion, and to
impress upon them, with persuasive eloquence, the impossibility of
maintaining existing conditions, and the tremendous blunder which had
been made in conferring the franchise upon the emancipated race.

Carteret conducted the press campaign, and held out to the Republicans
of the North the glittering hope that, with the elimination of the negro
vote, and a proper deference to Southern feeling, a strong white
Republican party might be built up in the New South. How well the bait
took is a matter of history,--but the promised result is still in the
future. The disfranchisement of the negro has merely changed the form of
the same old problem. The negro had no vote before the rebellion, and
few other rights, and yet the negro question was, for a century, the
pivot of American politics. It plunged the nation into a bloody war,
and it will trouble the American government and the American conscience
until a sustained attempt is made to settle it upon principles of
justice and equity.

The personal ambitions entertained by the leaders of this movement are
but slightly involved in this story. McBane's aims have been touched
upon elsewhere. The general would have accepted the nomination for
governor of the state, with a vision of a senatorship in the future.
Carteret hoped to vindicate the supremacy of his race, and make the
state fit for his son to live in, and, incidentally, he would not refuse
any office, worthy of his dignity, wh