Particularly was Colonel Cresswell stirred to 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.
To him Colonel Cresswell gave a few pregnant directions. Then he rode to town, and told Taylor again of his fears of a labor movement which would include whites and blacks. Taylor could not see any great danger.
“Of course,” he conceded, “they’ll eventually get together; their interests are identical. I’ll admit it’s our game to delay this as long possible.”
“It must be delayed forever, sir.”
“Can’t be,” was the terse response. “But even if they do ally themselves, our way is easy: separate the leaders, the talented, the pushers, of both races from their masses, and through them rule the rest by money.”
But Colonel Cresswell shook his head. “It’s precisely these leaders of the Negroes that we mush crush,” he insisted. Taylor looked