Lyman Resnick had been a war correspondent with the Richmond Enquirer. He had been there at the end when they drove old Dixie down, and he used his column to pen out weekly hagiographies of Confederate heroes and missives about the Cause. He was incredibly handsome, a real patrician of judicious manners. The ladies gossiped favorably about his relations to the Dukes of North Carolina, and his dry, witty sarcasms. The Republicans chided him as "Haw Haw" for his imperious snigger. There was great frustration by Bourbon George over what he considered Resnick's drolling style. He wanted an attack dog on his side. Dr. Licinius Prentiss, however, fawned over him, and the only time he would be seen to chuckle is in reading Resnick insult his rival in the most clever and scintillating manner. Dr. Prentiss would keep the best clippings in a scrapbook and touch them unnaturally.
Wilbur "Whip" Masters, on the other hand, was an outright carpetbagging muckraker. An abolitionist from Greenwich Village, New York, he wore a silk bowtie and ruffled cuffs below a velvet stovepipe hat. Compared to the intellectual and circumspect style of Haw Haw Resnick, Whip Masters was profane, vulgar and bombastic. He loved to whip up furor and indignation among the Republican constituency he held in thrall with the most outrageous claims. A peddler of sinister conspiracies, he would lambaste the Democrats as racists and traitors to America who planned to take away guns and usurp power over the state government.
Knowing most of his readership couldn't even read, he told them nonetheless how it was. He would slant news from a clapboard podium in Strangetown, accepting cash in exchange for adverting plugs on stuff like snake oil and other quackery. But Whip Masters was not stupid. He was a graduate of Hillsdale College and read Schopenhauer and Marx. He had written for The Nation. He had a very careful understanding of the power of oratory, something not seen among many journalists.
Barry Hogan, Chairman of the Limestone County Republican Party, was grateful to have such an attack dog on his side. Barry knew he could round up the black vote with the aide of Maw Possum. What he needed was buy in from skeptical white voters. Whip Masters had enormous influence among the Whig yeomanry who were resentful of the Greeks, despite his queer Yankee ways. He was also wildly popular among the poor white trash, who loved his lewd and blustering style. Most Democrats were so disgusted with the man that they wondered why someone hadn't shot the sunnabitch.
At length someone did. It was just a flesh wound, and the would-be assassin was killed in a shootout with Sheriff Royal Bill at a farm near Pettusville. He bore the ring of Adelphon Kuklos and was traced to the Pulaski Klan. When he returned to the podium, Whip Masters was more irascible than ever, accusing the Democrats of trying to silence the voice of the free people of Strangetown. He successfully stumped for the election of James Thomas Rapier, who was called "Jimmy Dickel" for his love of drinking and throwing dice in his youth.
When James Thomas Rapier became the first negro elected to the United States Congress for the Nickajack, Whip Masters was insufferable. He invited the Republican Congressman to speak at his podium while Barry Hogan passed out sweets and liquor. Crowds would stretch all across the boardwalks that lined the creekside of the Strangetown while Haw Haw Resnick would sneer and rebut from his office on Washington Street. He would never dare to step down into Strangetown.
Haw Haw Resnick approached what he perceived as the racial and Christian paradox of black suffrage with the basic truism that the negro was unprepared for the responsibilities of freedom. It was a seductive premise to embrace for former Confederates who wished to avoid charges of sedition or treason after having so recently been enfranchised again. And so Haw Haw wrote lengthy epistles cementing this premise to the original tenets of the old Cause to create a new post-war ideolog. He called it the Lost Cause. It was genius. For a war that evolved into the great crusade of liberation from human bondage, the Lost Cause rebranded secession as a heroic act to preserve self-determination and a paternalistic order of the human race. It was a compelling argument to white veterans who lost everything, even for some of the whites who lived among the blacks in Strangetown.
And so six o' clock would come around in Athens, and the Democrat's evening post would hit the stands with Haw Haw Resnick's latest encyclical while Whip Masters would straighten his bowtie, clear his throat, and open his mouth in gesticulating philippic behind his podium in Strangetown. It was the daily battle for the mind soul of Limestone County.
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