action. He realized that in Bles and Zora he was dealing with a younger class of educated black folk, who were learning to fight with new weapons. They were, he was sure, as dissolute and weak as their parents, but they were shrewder and more aspiring. They must be crushed, and crushed quickly. To this end he had recourse to two sources of help‚ÅÝ‚ÄîJohnson and the whites in town.
Johnson was what Colonel Cresswell repeatedly called ‚Äúa faithful nigger.‚Äù He was one of those constitutionally timid creatures into whom the servility of his fathers had sunk so deep that it had become second-nature. To him a white man was an archangel, while the Cresswells, his father‚Äôs masters, stood for God. He served them with doglike faith, asking no reward, and for what he gave in reverence to them, he took back in contempt for his fellows‚ÅÝ‚Äî‚Äúniggers!‚Äù He applied the epithet with more contempt than the Colonel himself could express. To the Negroes he was a ‚Äúwhite folk‚Äôs nigger,‚Äù to be despised and feared.