Colonel Howle A Carpet-bagger
Augustus Caesar Of the Black Guard
Charles Sumner Of Massachusetts
Gen. Benjamin F. Butler Of Fort Fisher
Andrew Johnson The President
U. S. Grant The Commanding General
Abraham Lincoln The Friend of the South

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THE CLANSMAN

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Book I--The Assassination

CHAPTER I

THE BRUISED REED

The fair girl who was playing a banjo and singing to the wounded soldiers
suddenly stopped, and, turning to the surgeon, whispered:

"What's that?"

"It sounds like a mob----"

With a common impulse they moved to the open window of the hospital and
listened.

On the soft spring air came the roar of excited thousands sweeping down
the avenue from the Capitol toward the White House. Above all rang the
cries of struggling newsboys screaming an "Extra." One of them darted
around the corner, his shrill voice quivering with excitement:

"_Extra! Extra! Peace! Victory!_"

Windows were suddenly raised, women thrust their heads out, and others
rushed into the street and crowded around the boy, struggling to get his
papers. He threw them right and left and snatched the money--no one asked
for change. Without ceasing rose his cry:

"_Extra! Peace! Victory! Lee has surrendered!_"

At last the end had come.

The great North, with its millions of sturdy people and their exhaustless
resources, had greeted the first shot on Sumter with contempt and
incredulity. A few regiments went forward for a month's outing to settle
the trouble. The Thirteenth Brooklyn marched gayly Southward on a thirty
days' jaunt, with pieces of rope conspicuously tied to their muskets with
which to bring back each man a Southern prisoner to be led in a noose
through the streets on their early triumphant return! It would be unkind
to tell what became of those ropes when they suddenly started back home
ahead of the scheduled time from the first battle of Bull Run.

People from the South, equally wise, marched gayly North, to whip five
Yankees each before breakfast, and encountered unforeseen difficulties.

Both sides had things to learn, and learned them in a school whose logic
is final--a four years' course in the U