I know little of politics. I have grown up with
the feeling that I must stay with my people through all things. I must
be kin by blood to half the white people in Charleston. How could I
desert them?"
"You couldn't," said Harry emphatically.
Colonel Leonidas Talbot smiled. It is possible that, at the moment,
he wished for the sanguine decision of youth, which could choose a side
and find only wrong in the other.
"In my heart," he continued, "I do not wish to see the Union broken up,
although the violence of New England orators and the raid of John Brown
has appalled me. But, Harry, pay good heed to me when I say it is not a
mere matter of going out of the Union. It may not be possible for South
Carolina and the states that follow her to stay out."
"I don't understand you," said the boy.
"It means war! It means war, as surely as the rising of the sun in the
morning. Many think that it does not; that the new republic will be
formed in peace, but I know better. A great and terrible war is coming.
Many of our colored people in Charleston and along the Carolina coast
came by the way of the West Indies. They have strange superstitions.
They believe that some of their number have the gift of second sight.
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