The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan

Within an hour from its adjournment it was known to the Managers that seven Republican Senators were doubtful, and that they formed a group under the leadership of two great constitutional lawyers who still believed in the sanctity of a judge’s oath – Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois, and William Pitt Fessenden, of Maine. Around them had gathered Senators Grimes, of Iowa, Van Winkle, of West Virginia, Fowler, of Tennessee, Henderson, of Missouri, and Ross, of Kansas. The Managers were in a panic. If these men dared to hold together with the twelve Democrats, the President would be acquitted by one vote – they could count thirty-four certain for conviction.

The Revolutionists threw to the winds the last scruple of decency, went into caucus and organized a conspiracy for forcing, within the few days which must pass before the verdict, these judges to submit to their decree.

Fessenden and Trumbull were threatened with impeachment and expulsion from the Senate and bombarded by the most furious assaults from the press, which denounced them as infamous traitors, “as mean, repulsive, and noxious as hedgehogs in the cages of a travelling menagerie.”

A mass meeting was held in Washington which said:

“Resolved, that we impeach Fessenden, Trumbull, and Grimes at the bar of justice and humanity, as traitors before whose guilt the infamy of Benedict Arnold becomes respectability and decency.”

The Managers sent out a circular telegram to every State from which came a doubtful judge:

“Great danger to the peace of the country if impeachment fails. Send your Senators public opinion by resolutions, letters, and delegates.”

The man who excited most wrath was Ross, of Kansas. That Kansas of all States should send a “traitor” was more than the spirits of the Revolutionists could bear.

A mass meeting in Leavenworth accordingly sent him the telegram:

“Kansas has heard the evidence and demands the conviction of the President.

“D. R. Anthony and 1,000 others.”

To this Ross replied:

“I have taken an oath to do impartial justice. I trust I shall have the courage and honesty to vote according to the dictates of my judgment and for the highest good of my country.”

He got his answer:

“Your motives are Indian contracts and greenbacks. Kansas repudiates you as she does all perjurers and skunks.”

The Managers organized an inquisition for the purpose of torturing and badgering Ross into submission. His one vote was all they lacked.

They laid siege to little Vinnie Ream, the sculptress, to whom Congress had awarded a contract for the statue of Lincoln. Her studio was in the crypt of the Capitol. They threatened her with the wrath of Congress, the loss of her contract, and ruin of her career unless she found a way to induce Senator Ross, whom she knew, to vote against the President.

Such an attempt to gain by fraud the verdict of a common court of law would have sent its promoters to prison for felony. Yet the Managers of this case, before the highest tribunal of the world, not only did it without a blush of shame, but cursed as a traitor every man who dared to question their motives.

As the day approached for the Court to vote, Senator Ross remained to friend and foe a sealed mystery. Reporters swarmed about him, the target of a thousand eyes. His rooms were besieged by his radical constituents who had been imported from Kansas in droves to browbeat him into a promise to convict. His movements day and night, his breakfast, his dinner, his supper, the clothes he wore, the colour of his cravat, his friends and companions, were chronicled in hourly bulletins and flashed over the wires from the delirious Capital.

Chief Justice Chase called the High Court of Impeachment to order, to render its verdict. Old Stoneman had again been carried to his chair in the arms of two negroes, and sat with his cold eyes searching the faces of the judges.

The excitement had reached the highest pitch of intensity. A sense of choking solemnity brooded over the scene. The feeling grew that the hour had struck which would test the capacity of man to establish an enduring Republic.

The Clerk read the Eleventh Article, drawn by the Great Commoner as the supreme test.

As its last words died away the Chief Justice rose amid a silence that was agony, placed his hands on the sides of the desk as if to steady himself, and said:

“Call the roll.”

Each Senator answered “Guilty” or “Not Guilty,” exactly as they had been counted by the Managers, until Fessenden’s name was called.

A moment of stillness and the great lawyer’s voice rang high, cold, clear, and resonant as a Puritan church bell on Sunday morning:

“Not Guilty!”

A murmur, half groan and sigh, half cheer and cry, rippled the great hall.

The other votes were discounted now save that of Edmund G. Ross, of Kansas. No human being on earth knew what this man would do save the silent invisible man within his soul.

Over the solemn trembling silence the voice of the Chief Justice rang:

“Senator Ross, how say you? Is the respondent, Andrew Johnson, guilty or not guilty of a high misdemeanor as charged in this article?”

The great Judge bent forward; his brow furrowed as Ross arose.

His fellow Senators watched him spellbound. A thousand men and women, hanging from the galleries, focused their eyes on him. Old Stoneman drew his bristling brows down, watching him like an adder ready to strike, his lower lip protruding, his jaws clinched as a vise, his hands fumbling the arms of his chair.

Every breath is held, every ear strained, as the answer falls from the sturdy Scotchman like the peal of a trumpet:

“Not Guilty!”

The crowd breathes – a pause, a murmur, the shuffle of a thousand feet —

The President is acquitted, and the Republic lives!

The House assembled and received the report of the verdict. Old Stoneman pulled himself half erect, holding to his desk, addressed the Speaker, introduced his second bill for the impeachment of the President, and fell fainting in the arms of his black attendants.

CHAPTER XII
Triumph in Defeat

Upon the failure to convict the President, Edwin M. Stanton resigned, sank into despair and died, and a soldier Secretary of War opened the prison doors.

Ben Cameron and his father hurried Southward to a home and land passing under a cloud darker than the dust and smoke of blood-soaked battlefields – the Black Plague of Reconstruction.

For two weeks the old Commoner wrestled in silence with Death. When at last he spoke, it was to the stalwart negroes who had called to see him and were standing by his bedside.

Turning his deep-sunken eyes on them a moment, he said slowly:

“I wonder whom I’ll get to carry me when you boys die!”

Elsie hurried to his side and kissed him tenderly. For a week his mind hovered in the twilight that lies between time and eternity. He seemed to forget the passions and fury of his fierce career and live over the memories of his youth, recalling pathetically its bitter poverty and its fair dreams. He would lie for hours and hold Elsie’s hand, pressing it gently.

In one of his lucid moments he said:

“How beautiful you are, my child! You shall be a queen. I’ve dreamed of boundless wealth for you and my boy. My plans are Napoleonic – and I shall not fail – never fear – aye, beyond the dreams of avarice!”

“I wish no wealth save the heart treasure of those I love, father,” was the soft answer.

“Of course, little day-dreamer. But the old cynic who has outlived himself and knows the mockery of time and things will be wisdom for your foolishness. You shall keep your toys. What pleases you shall please me. Yet I will be wise for us both.”

She laid her hand upon his lips, and he kissed the warm little fingers.

In these days of soul-nearness the iron heart softened as never before in love toward his children. Phil had hurried home from the West and secured his release from the remaining weeks of his term of service.

As the father lay watching them move about the room, the cold light in his deep-set wonderful eyes would melt into a soft glow.

As he grew stronger, the old fierce spirit of the unconquered leader began to assert itself. He would take up the fight where he left it off and carry it to victory.

Elsie and Phil sent the doctor to tell him the truth and beg him to quit politics.

“Your work is done; you have but three months to live unless you go South and find new life,” was the verdict.

“In either event I go to a warmer climate, eh, doctor?” said the cynic.

“Perhaps,” was the laughing reply.

“Good. It suits me better. I’ve had the move in mind. I can do more effective work in the South for the next two years. Your decision is fate. I’ll go at once.”

The doctor was taken aback.

“Come now,” he said persuasively. “Let a disinterested Englishman give you some advice. You’ve never taken any before. I give it as medicine, and I won’t put it on your bill. Slow down on politics. Your recent defeat should teach you a lesson in conservatism.”

The old Commoner’s powerful mouth became rigid, and the lower lip bulged:

“Conservatism – fossil putrefaction!”

“But defeat?”

“Defeat?” cried the old man. “Who said I was defeated? The South lies in ashes at my feet – the very names of her proud States blotted from history. The Supreme Court awaits my nod. True, there’s a man boarding in the White House, and I vote to pay his bills; but the page who answers my beck and call has more power. Every measure on which I’ve set my heart is law, save one – my Confiscation Act – and this but waits the fulness of time.”

The doctor, who was walking back and forth with his hands folded behind him, paused and said:

“I marvel that a man of your personal integrity could conceive such a measure; you, who refused to accept the legal release of your debts until the last farthing was paid – you, whose cruelty of the lip is hideous, and yet beneath it so gentle a personality, I’ve seen the pages in the House stand at your back and mimic you while speaking, secure in the smile with which you turned to greet their fun. And yet you press this crime upon a brave and generous foe?”

“A wrong can have no rights,” said Stoneman calmly. “Slavery will not be dead until the landed aristocracy on which it rested is destroyed. I am not cruel or unjust. I am but fulfilling the largest vision of universal democracy that ever stirred the soul of man – a democracy that shall know neither rich nor poor, bond nor free, white nor black. If I use the wild pulse-beat of the rage of millions, it is only a means to an end – this grander vision of the soul.”

“Then why not begin at home this vision, and give the stricken South a moment to rise?”

“No. The North is impervious to change, rich, proud, and unscathed by war. The South is in chaos and cannot resist. It is but the justice and wisdom of Heaven that the negro shall rule the land of his bondage. It is the only solution of the race problem. Lincoln’s contention that we could not live half white and half black is sound at the core. When we proclaim equality, social, political, and economic for the negro, we mean always to enforce it in the South. The negro will never be treated as an equal in the North. We are simply a set of cold-blooded liars on that subject, and always have been. To the Yankee the very physical touch of a negro is pollution.”

“Then you don’t believe this twaddle about equality?” asked the doctor.

“Yes and no. Mankind in the large is a herd of mercenary gudgeons or fools. As a lawyer in Pennsylvania I have defended fifty murderers on trial for their lives. Forty-nine of them were guilty. All these I succeeded in acquitting. One of them was innocent. This one they hung. Can a man keep his face straight in such a world? Could negro blood degrade such stock? Might not an ape improve it? I preach equality as a poet and seer who sees a vision beyond the rim of the horizon of to-day.”

The old man’s eyes shone with the set stare of a fanatic.

“And you think the South is ready for this wild vision?”

“Not ready, but helpless to resist. As a cold-blooded, scientific experiment, I mean to give the Black Man one turn at the Wheel of Life. It is an act of just retribution. Besides, in my plans I need his vote; and that settles it.”

“But will your plans work? Your own reports show serious trouble in the South already.”

Stoneman laughed.

“I never read my own reports. They are printed in molasses to catch flies. The Southern legislatures played into my hands by copying the laws of New England relating to Servants, Masters, Apprentices, and Vagrants. But even these were repealed at the first breath of criticism. Neither the Freedman’s Bureau nor the army has ever loosed its grip on the throat of the South for a moment. These disturbances and ‘atrocities’ are dangerous only when printed on campaign fly-paper.”

“And how will you master and control these ten great Southern States?”

“Through my Reconstruction Acts by means of the Union League. As a secret between us, I am the soul of this order. I organized it in 1863 to secure my plan of confiscation. We pressed it on Lincoln. He repudiated it. We nominated Frémont at Cleveland against Lincoln in ’64, and tried to split the party or force Lincoln to retire. Frémont, a conceited ass, went back on this plank in our platform, and we dropped him and helped elect Lincoln again.”

“I thought the Union League a patriotic and social organization?” said the doctor in surprise.

“It has these features, but its sole aim as a secret order is to confiscate the property of the South. I will perfect this mighty organization until every negro stands drilled in serried line beneath its banners, send a solid delegation here to do my bidding, and return at the end of two years with a majority so overwhelming that my word will be law. I will pass my Confiscation Bill. If Ulysses S. Grant, the coming idol, falters, my second bill of Impeachment will only need the change of a name.”

The doctor shook his head.

“Give up this madness. Your life is hanging by a thread. The Southern people even in their despair will never drink this black broth you are pressing to their lips.”

“They’ve got to drink it.”

“Your decision is unalterable?”

“Absolutely. It’s the breath I breathe. As my physician you may select the place to which I shall be banished. It must be reached by rail and wire. I care not its name or size. I’ll make it the capital of the Nation. There’ll be poetic justice in setting up my establishment in a fallen slaveholder’s mansion.”

The doctor looked intently at the old man:

“The study of men has become a sort of passion with me, but you are the deepest mystery I’ve yet encountered in this land of surprises.”

“And why?” asked the cynic.

“Because the secret of personality resides in motives, and I can’t find yours either in your actions or words.”

Stoneman glanced at him sharply from beneath his wrinkled brows and snapped.

“Keep on guessing.”

“I will. In the meantime I’m going to send you to the village of Piedmont, South Carolina. Your son and daughter both seem enthusiastic over this spot.”

“Good; that settles it. And now that mine own have been conspiring against me,” said Stoneman confidentially, “a little guile on my part. Not a word of what has passed between us to my children. Tell them I agree with your plans and give up my work. I’ll give the same story to the press – I wish nothing to mar their happiness while in the South. My secret burdens need not cloud their young lives.”

Dr. Barnes took the old man by the hand:

“I promise. My assistant has agreed to go with you. I’ll say good-bye. It’s an inspiration to look into a face like yours, lit by the splendour of an unconquerable will! But I want to say something to you before you set out on this journey.”

“Out with it,” said the Commoner.

“The breed to which the Southern white man belongs has conquered every foot of soil on this earth their feet have pressed for a thousand years. A handful of them hold in subjection three hundred millions in India. Place a dozen of them in the heart of Africa, and they will rule the continent unless you kill them – ”

“Wait,” cried Stoneman, “until I put a ballot in the hand of every negro and a bayonet at the breast of every white man from the James to the Rio Grande!”

“I’ll tell you a little story,” said the doctor with a smile. “I once had a half-grown eagle in a cage in my yard. The door was left open one day, and a meddlesome rooster hopped in to pick a fight. The eagle had been sick a week and seemed an easy mark. I watched. The rooster jumped and wheeled and spurred and picked pieces out of his topknot. The young eagle didn’t know at first what he meant. He walked around dazed, with a hurt expression. When at last it dawned on him what the chicken was about, he simply reached out one claw, took the rooster by the neck, planted the other claw in his breast, and snatched his head off.”

The old man snapped his massive jaws together and grunted contemptuously.

Book III – The Reign of Terror

CHAPTER I
A Fallen Slaveholder’s Mansion

Piedmont, South Carolina, which Elsie and Phil had selected for reasons best known to themselves as the place of retreat for their father, was a favourite summer resort of Charleston people before the war.

Ulster county, of which this village was the capital, bordered on the North Carolina line, lying alongside the ancient shore of York. It was settled by the Scotch folk who came from the North of Ireland in the great migrations which gave America three hundred thousand people of Covenanter martyr blood, the largest and most important addition to our population, larger in number than either the Puritans of New England or the so-called Cavaliers of Virginia and Eastern Carolina; and far more important than either, in the growth of American nationality.

To a man they had hated Great Britain. Not a Tory was found among them. The cries of their martyred dead were still ringing in their souls when George III started on his career of oppression. The fiery words of Patrick Henry, their spokesman in the valley of Virginia, had swept the aristocracy of the Old Dominion into rebellion against the King and on into triumphant Democracy. They had made North Carolina the first home of freedom in the New World, issued the first Declaration of Independence in Mecklenburg, and lifted the first banner of rebellion against the tyranny of the Crown.

They grew to the soil wherever they stopped, always home lovers and home builders, loyal to their own people, instinctive clan leaders and clan followers. A sturdy, honest, covenant-keeping, God-fearing, fighting people, above all things they hated sham and pretence. They never boasted of their families, though some of them might have quartered the royal arms of Scotland on their shields.

To these sturdy qualities had been added a strain of Huguenot tenderness and vivacity.

The culture of cotton as the sole industry had fixed African slavery as their economic system. With the heritage of the Old World had been blended forces inherent in the earth and air of the new Southland, something of the breath of its unbroken forests, the freedom of its untrod mountains, the temper of its sun, and the sweetness of its tropic perfumes.

When Mrs. Cameron received Elsie’s letter, asking her to secure for them six good rooms at the “Palmetto” hotel, she laughed. The big rambling hostelry had been burned by roving negroes, pigs were wallowing in the sulphur springs, and along its walks, where lovers of olden days had strolled, the cows were browsing on the shrubbery.

But she laughed for a more important reason. They had asked for a six-room cottage if accommodations could not be had in the hotel.

She could put them in the Lenoir place. The cotton crop from their farm had been stolen from the gin – the cotton tax of $200 could not be paid, and a mortgage was about to be foreclosed on both their farm and home. She had been brooding over their troubles in despair. The Stonemans’ coming was a godsend.

Mrs. Cameron was helping them set the house in order to receive the new tenants.

“I declare,” said Mrs. Lenoir gratefully. “It seems too good to be true. Just as I was about to give up – the first time in my life – here came those rich Yankees and with enough rent to pay the interest on the mortgages and our board at the hotel. I’ll teach Margaret to paint, and she can give Marion lessons on the piano. The darkest hour’s just before day. And last week I cried when they told me I must lose the farm.”

“I was heartsick over it for you.”

“You know, the farm was my dowry with the dozen slaves Papa gave us on our wedding-day. The negroes did as they pleased, yet we managed to live and were very happy.”

Marion entered and placed a bouquet of roses on the table, touching them daintily until she stood each flower apart in careless splendour. Their perfume, the girl’s wistful dreamy blue eyes and shy elusive beauty, all seemed a part of the warm sweet air of the June morning. Mrs. Lenoir watched her lovingly.

“Mamma, I’m going to put flowers in every room. I’m sure they haven’t such lovely ones in Washington,” said Marion eagerly, as she skipped out.

The two women moved to the open window, through which came the drone of bees and the distant music of the river falls.

“Marion’s greatest charm,” whispered her mother, “is in her way of doing things easily and gently without a trace of effort. Watch her bend over to get that rose. Did you ever see anything like the grace and symmetry of her figure – she seems a living flower!”

“Jeannie, you’re making an idol of her – ”

“Why not? With all our troubles and poverty, I’m rich in her! She’s fifteen years old, her head teeming with romance. You know, I was married at fifteen. There’ll be a half dozen boys to see her to-night in our new home – all of them head over heels in love with her.”

“Oh, Jeannie, you must not be so silly! We should worship God only.”

“Isn’t she God’s message to me and to the world?”

“But if anything should happen to her – ”

The young mother laughed. “I never think of it. Some things are fixed. Her happiness and beauty are to me the sign of God’s presence.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re coming to live with us in the heart of town. This place is a cosey nest, just such a one as a poet lover would build here in the edge of these deep woods, but it is too far out for you to be alone. Dr. Cameron has been worrying about you ever since he came home.”

“I’m not afraid of the negroes. I don’t know one of them who wouldn’t go out of his way to do me a favour. Old Aleck is the only rascal I know among them, and he’s too busy with politics now even to steal a chicken.”

“And Gus, the young scamp we used to own; you haven’t forgotten him? He is back here, a member of the company of negro troops, and parades before the house every day to show off his uniform. Dr. Cameron told him yesterday he’d thrash him if he caught him hanging around the place again. He frightened Margaret nearly to death when she went to the barn to feed her horse.”

“I’ve never known the meaning of fear. We used to roam the woods and fields together all hours of the day and night: my lover, Marion, and I. This panic seems absurd to me.”

“Well, I’ll be glad to get you two children under my wing. I was afraid I’d find you in tears over moving from your nest.”

“No, where Marion is I’m at home, and I’ll feel I’ve a mother when I get with you.”

“Will you come to the hotel before they arrive?”

“No; I’ll welcome and tell them how glad I am they have brought me good luck.”

“I’m delighted, Jeannie. I wished you to do this, but I couldn’t ask it. I can never do enough for this old man’s daughter. We must make their stay happy. They say he’s a terrible old Radical politician, but I suppose he’s no meaner than the others. He’s very ill, and she loves him devotedly. He is coming here to find health, and not to insult us. Besides, he was kind to me. He wrote a letter to the President. Nothing that I have will be too good for him or for his. It’s very brave and sweet of you to stay and meet them.”

“I’m doing it to please Marion. She suggested it last night, sitting out on the porch in the twilight. She slipped her arm around me and said:

“‘Mamma, we must welcome them and make them feel at home. He is very ill. They will be tired and homesick. Suppose it were you and I, and we were taking my Papa to a strange place.’”

When the Stonemans arrived, the old man was too ill and nervous from the fatigue of the long journey to notice his surroundings or to be conscious of the restful beauty of the cottage into which they carried him. His room looked out over the valley of the river for miles, and the glimpse he got of its broad fertile acres only confirmed his ideas of the “slaveholding oligarchy” it was his life-purpose to crush. Over the mantel hung a steel engraving of Calhoun. He fell asleep with his deep, sunken eyes resting on it and a cynical smile playing about his grim mouth.

Margaret and Mrs. Cameron had met the Stonemans and their physician at the train, and taken Elsie and her father in the old weather-beaten family carriage to the Lenoir cottage, apologising for Ben’s absence.

“He has gone to Nashville on some important legal business, and the doctor is ailing, but as the head of the clan Cameron he told me to welcome your father to the hospitality of the county, and beg him to let us know if he could be of help.”

The old man, who sat in a stupor of exhaustion, made no response, and Elsie hastened to say:

“We appreciate your kindness more than I can tell you, Mrs. Cameron. I trust father will be better in a day or two, when he will thank you. The trip has been more than he could bear.”

“I am expecting Ben home this week,” the mother whispered. “I need not tell you that he will be delighted at your coming.”

Elsie smiled and blushed.

“And I’ll expect Captain Stoneman to see me very soon,” said Margaret softly. “You will not forget to tell him for me?”

“He’s a very retiring young man,” said Elsie, “and pretends to be busy about our baggage just now. I’m sure he will find the way.”

Elsie fell in love at sight with Marion and her mother. Their easy genial manners, the genuineness of their welcome, and the simple kindness with which they sought to make her feel at home put her heart into a warm glow.

Mrs. Lenoir explained the conveniences of the place and apologized for its defects, the results of the war.

“I am sorry about the window curtains – we have used them all for dresses. Marion is a genius with a needle, and we took the last pair out of the parlour to make a dress for a birthday party. The year before, we used the ones in my room for a costume at a starvation party in a benefit for our rector – you know we’re Episcopalians – strayed up here for our health from Charleston among these good Scotch Presbyterians.”

“We will soon place curtains at the windows,” said Elsie cheerfully.

“The carpets were sent to the soldiers for blankets during the war. It was all we could do for our poor boys, except to cut my hair and sell it. You see my hair hasn’t grown out yet. I sent it to Richmond the last year of the war. I felt I must do something when my neighbours were giving so much. You know Mrs. Cameron lost four boys.”

“I prefer the floors bare,” Elsie replied. “We will get a few rugs.”

She looked at the girlish hair hanging in ringlets about Mrs. Lenoir’s handsome face, smiled pathetically, and asked:

“Did you really make such sacrifices for your cause?”

“Yes, indeed. I was glad when the war was ended for some things. We certainly needed a few pins, needles, and buttons, to say nothing of a cup of coffee or tea.”

“I trust you will never lack for anything again,” said Elsie kindly.

“You will bring us good luck,” Mrs. Lenoir responded. “Your coming is so fortunate. The cotton tax Congress levied was so heavy this year we were going to lose everything. Such a tax when we are all about to starve! Dr. Cameron says it was an act of stupid vengeance on the South, and that no other farmers in America have their crops taxed by the National Government. I am so glad your father has come. He is not hunting for an office. He can help us, maybe.”

“I am sure he will,” answered Elsie thoughtfully.

Marion ran up the steps lightly, her hair dishevelled and face flushed.

“Now, Mamma, it’s almost sundown; you get ready to go. I want her awhile to show her about my things.”

She took Elsie shyly by the hand and led her into the lawn, while her mother paid a visit to each room, and made up the last bundle of odds and ends she meant to carry to the hotel.

“I hope you will love the place as we do,” said the girl simply.

“I think it very beautiful and restful,” Elsie replied. “This wilderness of flowers looks like fairyland. You have roses running on the porch around the whole length of the house.”

“Yes, Papa was crazy over the trailing roses, and kept planting them until the house seems just a frame built to hold them, with a roof on it. But you can see the river through the arches from three sides. Ben Cameron helped me set that big beauty on the south corner the day he ran away to the war – ”

“The view is glorious!” Elsie exclaimed, looking in rapture over the river valley.

The village of Piedmont crowned an immense hill on the banks of the Broad River, just where it dashes over the last stone barrier in a series of beautiful falls and spreads out in peaceful glory through the plains toward Columbia and the distant sea. The muffled roar of these falls, rising softly through the trees on its wooded cliff, held the daily life of the people in the spell of distant music. In fair weather it soothed and charmed, and in storm and freshet rose to the deep solemn growl of thunder.

The river made a sharp bend as it emerged from the hills and flowed westward for six miles before it turned south again. Beyond this six-mile sweep of its broad channel loomed the three ranges of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the first one dark, rich, distinct, clothed in eternal green, the last one melting in dim lines into the clouds and soft azure of the sky.