John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

The Judge smiles. The lawyer’s hand reveals itself. Iradelle Meares is standing up there between the Taylor brothers, and this bears evidence of his precision. They will recognize and yield to preclude any whiff of sedition, but only if exerted , to maintain the boldness of the assertion—

“— we would not for a moment believe that it is the purpose of more than sixty million of our own race to subject us permanently to a fate to which no Anglo-Saxon has ever been forced to submit .”

Playing to the jury here, and not the judge, appealing to what even the most hard-hearted white yankee must admit—

“ We hereby proclaim— ”

It is the same appeal the great Calhoun made to the Senate when he was at Death’s door, his last plea to settle the differences of North and South or part amicably. That the original intent had been perverted, the original balance irrevocably lost, and that it was only the North with its numbers and control who could save the day, unless “her love of power and aggrandizement is far greater than her love of the Union.” The sine qua non here is not Union but the deeper, more holy sense of what it means to be a white man and a Christian—

“ First — That the time has passed for the intelligent citizens of the community, owning ninety percent of the property and paying taxes in like proportion, to be ruled by negroes .”

It is common sense, but common sense and statutory law are distant cousins. The Colonel continues down the list of resolutions to much noisy approbation, that whites who manipulate the black vote to dominate the public sphere will no longer be tolerated; that the negro is incapable of understanding where his best interests lie; that the practice of hiring blacks to fill the predominance of positions in the workplace has encouraged their present impertinence and must be curtailed; that the responsible white citizens of the city are prepared and determined to protect themselves and their loved ones—

“ We are prepared ,” Waddell continues, with none of the vacillation of the unrehearsed, “ to treat the negroes with justice and consideration in all matters that do not involve sacrifices of the interest of the intelligent and progressive portion of the community— ”

The flattery is brilliant, for who will not desire to be included among the intelligent and progressive? Who will argue that the interests of such exalted citizens should not be paramount? And then, without ever mentioning his name, the Colonel comes to the fate of Alexander Manly.

“ This vile publication, the Record , shall cease to be published and its editor banished from our environs within twenty-four hours. ”

Men are standing on chairs to applaud now, pounding the walls in a frenzy. Were this a trial he would clear the courtroom, but it is no legal proceeding but an exercise in posse comitatus that he hopes will preclude a lynching, or, if that act be done, indemnify the citizens in this room from responsibility.

Sol Fishblate thanks the Colonel profusely and thanks the press, looking pointedly at Tom Clawson, for serving as secretaries for this historic gathering and for their vital efforts to inform and inflame the public preceding the election. Then the wily Jew recommends a few amendments to the Declaration, requiring the resignation of the mayor and the chief of police and the Board of Aldermen, and there is more celebration and the Judge feels the gear click into place, the machinery of it all too clear to him now. A coup has been planned, no waiting for the slow evolution of political reform, for the months of proposal and legislation to effect the needed changes — it is a coup d’etat , despite all the eloquent verbiage, and when his name is called to be on a Committee of twenty-five to enforce the provisions of the document he steps forward and agrees to join it.

MacRae is on the Committee, no surprise there, and Allen Taylor, and Meares and Frank Steadman and a pair of ministers and Dr. Galloway and a quorum of the intelligent and the progressive, of good white men, and he is proud to be included but relieved that there is no swearing in, no palms pressed to Scripture to legitimize the moment. His emotions are just as divided as he lines up with over four hundred others to put their names on the Declaration.

“This is how the Founders must have felt,” says John Bellamy, who will be their new congressman, “waiting to sign the parchment.”

Perhaps. But to the Judge it feels more like the uneasy night in the Masonic Hall, when, surrounded by his fellows in the Craft, he knelt bare-kneed beneath the blue ceiling, cable tow wrapped three times around his body and swore, upon no less a penalty than having his body severed in twain and his bowels taken hence, never to violate the Obligation — an emotion both solemn and false.

It takes the citizen behind him in the line, Junius Hargeaves, who butchers swine on Front Street, to cut to the bone of the matter.

“If it stick the niggers back where they belong,” he twangs, “I’ll sign any damn thing.”

Dr. Lunceford has never been in the Cape Fear Club before. The two white men in red shirts who came to get him with their pistols showing bring him in through the front door and lead him to a large meeting room. Inside are Hugh MacRae and two dozen white men neatly arranged on one side of a long table and a greater number of black citizens who have been summoned like himself crowded haphazardly on the other. His fellow alderman Elijah Green is here, and Dr. Alston and Henderson and Moore and Scott the attorneys and Tom Miller and his own son-in-law Dorsey and some other barbers and even Mr. Sadgwar, the old gentleman looking confused and upset to be awake at this hour.

“That should be enough,” says Mr. MacRae on the other side of the table. “Let’s get this thing started.”

The next surprise is that it is old Colonel Waddell who seems to be presiding over whatever this gathering is supposed to be.

“I’m going to read you a statement,” he says, “and you’re going to listen.”

Dr. Lunceford studies the faces of the white men as Waddell reads. A few meet his gaze with glares or stoic indifference, but none shows the slightest hint of the shame they should feel to be associated with the racialist tripe the old man is flatly reading. White Man’s Declaration of Independence indeed. It is a clever strategy, he admits, to adopt the language of patriotism and liberation to cloak their designs on absolute power, but it is also as vile and cowardly a course of action as he can imagine. He looks to his fellow “leaders,” whom MacRae has taken it upon himself to dub the Colored Citizens’ Committee. They have no doubt been escorted here at gunpoint as he was, and sit with a kind of stunned resignation as one preposterous resolution follows another. The election results have been tampered with beyond the credulity of even the most prejudiced observer, the Democrats apparently not content to merely threaten their competitors away from the ballot box, and this farce of a proclamation seems a pointless reiteration of their contempt—

“ It is further resolved ,” reads the old Secessionist, “ to demand the immediate resignation of Mayor Silas Wright, Chief of Police John R. Melton, and the entire standing Board of Aldermen— ”

Elijah Green makes a small groan beside him. This isn’t a declaration of independence, it is a demand for submission.

The Colonel finishes, lays the typewritten sheets of paper back on the table. “This is not a proposal,” he says. “There will be no discussion.”

Nobody on his side of the table speaks, so the Doctor clears his throat. “In regards to Editor Manly,” he says softly, “he has acted entirely on his own. His newspaper has ceased publication, and, I have it on good authority, he has already absented himself from the city.”