Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/341



The following extracts from the Daily Record, Greensboro, North Carolina, February 2nd and 3rd, 1911, setting forth the reminiscences of Captain Ball, a participant in the Reconstruction of the Southern States, gives valuable information as to the troublous times of that period:

New York, Feb. 2.—I have now told nearly all of the authenticated facts concerning the Stephens murder; the rest is merely speculative. There have been stories coming from the negroes which are interesting, even if not strictly true. A negro has quite an imagination. I will relate some of these stories, without expressing an opinion, leaving others to decide as to their accuracy and naturalness.

Much of what follows comes from Governor Holden, at the time an aged man, retired (perhaps not voluntarily) from public life. The tendency of his political opinions in his later years was toward "Conservation." I called upon him in February, 1885 (twenty-six years ago) and took notes of what he said, because of its inherent interest. His memory was clear and comprehensive. While governor—he was elected by the Republicans in 1868—and before his impeachment and removal from office by the Democratic legislature of 1870, he sought to unravel the mysteries of the Kuklux brotherhoods; and tried in every way to discover the perpetrators of the Stephens assassination.

It has already been stated that Stephens, on the fatal Saturday, was in attendance upon a Conservative meeting in Yanceyville, and that he went out of it with Wiley. It is reported that Wiley, on his way home, took supper at the house of a Mr. Poteat. Now the negroes are not only full of curiosity, but take risks to gratify it. Nothing was more common than for them to listen from behind doors, through keyholes and in the corners of the houses where they were employed as servants. Thus it happened that the conversation at the supper-table at Poteat's—so the story goes—was overheard by a negro woman (and other servants), who had been waiting upon the table, and a most pitiful 299