The band was playing “The Battleship of Maine,” a popular marching song from the Cuban war. The Red Shirts picketed their mounts military fashion along a rope. The Boys Brigade milled around, admiring the horses, then stacked their toy rifles and formed up for barbecue.

By the time Sam arrived at the park, the party was well under way. White supremacy banners flew on ropes suspended between the ridgepoles. Boys waved American and Confederate flags. Colonel Waddell, Pastor Hoge, George Rountree, Walker and J. Allan Taylor, and Hugh MacRae were seated at a special reserved table at the head of the biggest tent, like a wedding party. Clawson was standing nearby, talking over Walker Taylor’s shoulder.

“Well, at last—the press!” Colonel Waddell joked when Sam walked up.

“Big turnout,” Sam said.

Over the music of the band and the clamor of shouted conversations, Rountree was talking seriously. He had been to see Governor Russell two weeks ago, along with Hoge.

Sam knew that, after a lot of leaning, Governor Russell had backed down, canceling last week’s scheduled speech in Wilmington and promising to keep the Republicans from fielding a slate of candidates. He hedged, same as when he had let the Democrats take a majority on the Board of Audit and Finance. He was running scared. In 1870, when the Democrats swept the state ballot, they had impeached the Republican governor. Russell was too cagey to expose himself like that.

He laid down a condition: the two Democratic candidates most likely to impeach him must be taken off the ballot in favor of more moderate candidates. The delegation had agreed.

One of the new “moderate” nominees was George Rountree.

Meantime, the Republican slate had collapsed. Ben Keith, drafted to run for the state senate, had announced in a letter to the Messenger and other newspapers in town, “I cannot afford to sacrifice my business interests for political considerations.” Twice, he’d been ambushed by thugs from the White Government Union, and the Red Shirts had enforced a boycott of his store. He was going broke and feared for his life. The daily mail brought anonymous threats to his family. Rountree visited him late one night and wrote the letter for him.

Dan Gore, candidate for the state house of representatives, and like Keith an alderman, had also gotten scared off. He was easier than Keith—a single brick through his front window, wrapped in a sheet of paper on which was scrawled a crude skull and crossbones. He vowed publicly to vote the white supremacy ticket. He gave Rountree fifty dollars for the campaign war chest.