"And now," the Congressman boomed, "it gives me tremendous pleasure to have the privilege of presenting to you all the leader of our great Freedom Party, Mr. Jaaake Featherston!"
The roar of applause and cheers that went up stunned Potter's ears. He opened his mouth, but silently. He didn't have to shout, and keeping his mouth open helped protect his ears. Featherston, an old artilleryman, likely knew that trick himself.
Through the shouts and clapping from the crowd came disciplined yells from the men in white shirts and butternut trousers: "Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!" Little by little, more and more people joined that chant, so it began to drown out the noise all around: "Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!" The two-syllable word felt as heavy and regular as a heartbeat.
Jake Featherston let the chant build to a deafening crescendo, then raised both hands above his head. Still disciplined, the blocks of goons fell silent at once. Without their steadying influence, the cries faded away after perhaps fifteen seconds.
Into the ringing quiet that followed, Featherston said, "It's always good to come to Charleston, on account of this here is where the Confederate States of America were born." He couldn't miss getting applause with that line. He couldn't-and he didn't. Again, Clarence Potter had to clap along with everybody else to keep from standing out. He hated that, but saw no way around it.
Featherston went on, "They say showing's better than telling, and I guess they're right. We've been telling people what's wrong with the Confederate States for more than ten years now, and not enough folks wanted to listen. Now the Whigs have gone and shown we were right all along, and all of a sudden everybody's paying attention to us. I wish to heaven it didn't have to happen like this, I truly do, but here we are just the same."
To Clarence Potter, staunch Whig, it wasn't much of a joke, but people around him laughed. Featherston said, "I'm warning people right now, it's not a good idea to think about the Freedom Party like we're just another bunch of politicians."
Cries of, "No!" and, "Hell, no!" and, "Better not!" rang from the crowd. Featherston let them spread through Hampton Park, then raised his hands again. This time, silence fell at once.
Into it, he said, "We are the Confederacy's destiny. We are the Confederacy's future. We're giving our dear country a faith and a will again. We have to concentrate all our strength on action, revolutionary action. Because we're going that way, we're gathering into our ranks every last member of the Confederate people who still has energy and nerve-that's you, folks, and I'm glad of it!"
People were even more eager to applaud themselves than they were to applaud Jake Featherston. Again, Potter had to clap, too. As he did, he reluctantly nodded. He's shrewder than he used to be, he thought. He doesn't just think of himself any more. But that wasn't right. No, he lets people think he's thinking about them. Inside, he's still the same cold-blooded snake he always was.
"Burton Mitchel wants to cozy up to the United States. The USA saved his bacon once," Featherston shouted. "But the United States can't save his bacon this time around, on account of they haven't got any bacon of their own. And even if they did, do y'all want to be the USA's tagalong little brother from now till the end of time?"
Some people shouted, "No!" Others shouted things a good deal more incendiary. Potter would never have said anything like that where ladies might hear. But then, not ten feet away from him, a woman who looked like a schoolteacher yelled something that would have made a sergeant, a twenty-year veteran, blush.
"We've got us a duty: a duty to be strong," Jake Featherston declared. "We've got us a duty to stand up to the United States just as soon as we can. And to do that, we've got us a duty to put our own house in order. We've got us a duty to put people back to work. We've got us a duty to make sure they don't go hungry. We've got us a duty to keep the niggers in their place, and not to let them steal work from white folks. And we've got us a duty to remember what the Confederate States of America are all about. And folks, what we're about is-"
"Freedom!" The great roar staggered Potter.
"Y'all remember that," Featherston said. "Remember it every single day. When you see the liars and the cheats getting together, don't let 'em get away with it. Smash 'em up! How can you have freedom when the rich folks want to take it away from you?"
Does he see the irony there? Potter wondered. Does he see it and not care, or does it go right by him? As the crowd roared, as Jake Featherston wished them a happy New Year and exhorted them to vote for the Party in November, Potter wondered which of those possibilities frightened him worse.
W hen Jake Featherston came through South Carolina on his speaking tour, Anne Colleton tried to see him. She tried, and she failed. Featherston wouldn't talk to her; a flunky told her he wasn't available.
She fumed for days afterwards. She wasn't used to getting brushed off. Her habit, in fact, was to brush off others. Featherston annoyed her enough to make her wonder if she shouldn't stay a Whig after all. In the end, what made her decide she had to swallow her pride was the thought that staying a Whig meant admitting Clarence Potter had been right all along. If he had, why had she broken up with him over their political differences? Staying a Whig would mean swallowing her pride, too, and swallowing it in front of an old lover. She preferred making up with Jake Featherston to that.
After the papers announced Featherston's return to Richmond, she sent a telegram to Freedom Party headquarters: SHALL I COME NORTH TO
TALK THINGS OVER?
The answer, at least, returned promptly: COME AHEAD. CONVINCE FERD
Anne said something extremely unladylike as she crumpled up the telegram and threw it in the trash. Having to talk with anyone except Jake Featherston himself was galling. But Ferdinand Koenig wasn't a flunky, or not precisely a flunky. He'd been in the Freedom Party even longer than Featherston had, and had twice been his running mate on the Party ticket. The main difference between him and Jake was that he wasn't colorful.
And so, swallowing her pride again, Anne wired, ARRIVE NEXT
As she usually did when coming up to Richmond, she booked a room in Ford's Hotel, just north of Capitol Square. The room she got gave her a fine view of the square. In happier times, it would have been a peaceful, restful, patriotic view. She could have looked out on the grass and on the splendid statues of George Washington and Albert Sidney Johnston.
She could still see the statues. Tents and shanties swallowed almost all the winter-brown grass. Men walked aimlessly from one to another, some smoking, some sipping from whiskey bottles. Here and there, women hung out laundry on lines that ran from tents to trees. Children ran this way and that.
Columbia and Charleston had shantytowns, too. Even St. Matthews had a little one. But Anne had never seen any to match Richmond's. The capital of the Confederate States was a great city. When things went wrong, they went wrong more visibly here than anywhere else.
She asked the house detective, "How bad are things? Will my clothes and suitcases still be in my room when I get back?"
"Likely so, ma'am," he answered. "We work hard at keeping the trash out of the hotel. We had some trouble with that when things first went sour, but we don't let it happen any more. It's just a matter of taking pains."
Giving pains, too, she thought. The house dick was about six feet three, with shoulders wide as a barn door. He wasn't visibly armed, but she was sure he had brass knucks or a blackjack stashed where he could get at them in a hurry. She wouldn't have wanted to run into him if he found her anywhere she wasn't supposed to be.