Matters have changed greatly since those days, and all for the better. The people of the whole country understand one another, and there is no longer any sectional prejudice for the politicians to feed and grow fat upon. But in the days of reconstruction¹ everything was at white heat, and every episode and every development appeared to be calculated to add to the excitement. In all this, Shady Dale had as large a share as any other community. The whites had witnessed many political outrages² that seemed to have for their object the renewal³ of armed resistance. And it is impossible, even at this late day, for any impartial⁴ person to read the debates in the Federal Congress during the years of 1867-68 without realising the awful fact that the prime movers in the reconstruction scheme (if not the men who acted as their instruments and tools) were intent on stirring up a new revolution in the hope that the negroes might be prevailed upon to sack cities and towns, and destroy the white population. This is the only reasonable inference; no other conceivable conclusion can explain the wild and whirling words that were uttered in these debates: unless, indeed, some charitable investigator⁶ shall establish the fact that the radical⁷ leaders were suffering from a sort of contagious⁸ dementia.