The Fathers by Allen Tate

Author:Allen Tate [Tate, Allen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

*

A few days later, after the Virginia convention had taken the State out of the Union, I was coming home from school, it must have been about four o’clock, and I saw a crowd down Washington Street gathered around the flag-pole. The United States flag hung limp against the pole in the windless air. I ran, and when I came to the edge of the crowd heard the steady plunk of an ax in an unnatural stillness. I pushed my way slowly into the center of the ring. A young man handed the ax to a man with gray hair, who with stiff, feeble strokes loosened a few chips, then would have fallen had not two younger men stepped forward to support him. There was still no disorder, not even talk. Men quietly awaited their turns. Just inside the circle Major Corse stood, a little aloof, his arms folded and a vague smile lighting his eyes. He looked at me but gave no sign of recognition. There was a cry, ‘Look out!’ The circle broke and scattered as the crackling pine fell with a crash upon the cobblestones.

Before the Presidential election of 1860, only a few months ago, supporters of the Union ticket of Bell and Everett had erected the pole, and I believe papa contributed to it. They insisted that secession was a crime, and continued to insist until this day, the 17th of April, when Mr Lincoln’s proclamation reached us, calling for seventy-five thousand volunteers to suppress in South Carolina ‘combinations too powerful to be dealt with by the courts’; on this day they all became violent supporters of the crime.

All, or nearly all, but papa; for during secession week he seldom went abroad, staying indoors and reading the papers as never before. Cousin John Semmes came in to sit with him in the evening, but by tacit understanding there was no discussion of ‘politics.’ One evening, as Cousin John was about to leave, he asked papa if he hadn’t better go back to Pleasant Hill.

‘No, sir, the madness will subside.’

So far as papa was concerned life went on as usual — which meant that Coriolanus dusted the back-parlor every morning and I went to school and at night pretended to study my lessons. Boys of my own age, too young to volunteer in any of the militia companies, envied our older brothers, who would surely in a few weeks go up the river and cross the Long Bridge into Washington, and wrest the government away from the ‘foreigners.’ We had our own excitements, our own special and immemorial ways of amusing ourselves; but this is not my story.

In the week after Charles had resigned his commission he waited at home, and we understood that he could not decide whether to join the Mt Vernon Guards as captain or offer his services to the Confederate government. He was waiting, I think, for Colonel Lee to set an example — which he did towards the end of that week

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