The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-09-13

conception to take the Stowe slave driver,
Simon Legree, and make him show his
true, dark colors in Reconstruction times
"a leader and deceiver OF the negroes
against the whites struggling under n
great burden and threatened with many
dangers There is indeed felicity of
touch in that cunning stroke of the artist
brush 1t is so well done l feel like rails
in nv critical hat to the gifted Inner,
and saying through the telephone to the
author as he enjoys his Virginian home
on the Chesapeake, Hail Good Fellow, and
may God increase your tribe. Mrs. Stowe,
if living, if she condescended to read the
clever book of MI Dixon's. might recall
as alike applicable to herself and her low
character she painted
He digged a pit,
He digged it deep,
He digged it for his brother,
But to punish his sin,
He did fall in
The pit he digged for tother"
He ''commends" with real art this
even handed justice" to the New Eng
land writer-"commends the ingredients of
our poisoned chalice" to her "own lips. y
The evil she did, is used we'll ''to return
to plague the inventor" and it lives after
her. But perhaps Mr.. Dixon is equally
as happy-possibly even more inventive
and artistic. when he pays off that gifted
New England scholar, lawyer and orator,
Senator Lowell, of Massachusetts,, with
the fine scene, so forceful, so impressive
so startling, in which he and the educated
negro graduate at Harvard University,
named George Harris, are the dramatls
personal George has fallen in love with
the beautiful, highly attractive, finely
educated daughter of the aristocratic Z.
S. Senator and proposes marriage. 1t is
highly dramatic and vigorous. 1t is cap.
italy wrought and strikes deep.
Mr.. Dixon brings out in full force the
evils that followed the damning, deadly
Reconstruction acts in our dear South
Northern men may read and deny, but 1t
is truth in force and most convincing.
There are tens of thousands Of lntell-
gent, educated, heightened Southrons
men and women who know of those awful
times. and what it brought upon the
South in the way of maled:ction, crueltles,
curses, and robberies. Congress literally
PLAYED the devil" when it adopted It's
plan of wrongs and punishment known as
Reconstruction Acts. that blasted like a
sirocco and smote like a pestilence. /
quote now from the critical paper In the
New York Bookman of July, 1902. The
writer is giving a summary, based on
Mr.. Dixon's general statements The
writer is Northern l suppose. He says:
even before the passage OF these acts
the task before the South would have
strained it to the utmost "had every pos
sible aid been extended by the victorious
North" The bases of the old economic
order were blasted; five billion dollars
worth of property had been destroyed;
every cent of current money was declared
| forfeit. and the best of Southern man
hood were buried in unmarked trenches
or flung back upon society manned and
destitute. But these things were within
the cost and arbitrament of war, and the
South accepted them and was ever
! dumbly content. Then came the amazing
series of Congressional measures by which
the South was redevastatcd and race was
poised against race in hate