William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

[355] African race. His scalawag champion cannot help him in a train. Here ladies rule. All ladies are Conservatives, and in America nothing can be done if ladies object. You see these fellows huddled in a front car, next to the engine, smothered by the smoke of burning logs. Some of them are merry, others sullen; yet, in spite of their many discomforts, not a soul amongst them dreams of straying into the better cars.

“The Negro never comes into your company?” we ask a passenger.

“ Never,” he replies, a curl of scorn on his thin aristocratic lips; “a Negro sit among our wives and sisters!”

“Has he not the legal right?”

“Such right as rules and articles can give him,yes; but he knows his place a good deal better than the scalawags. If Kellogg and his crew were gone, we should have no more trouble with the coloured folk. They know us; we know them. It was a crime to give them votes; but we could live well enough with coloured voters, if the Federal troops were called away.”

“ You have no fear of their majorities?”