The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [85]
When Jacob came to her house and her bed that night, she and Jacob had a gentle little laugh over that. But Jacob felt guilty, and often he had a temptation to confess to Sarah. Sometimes he would think about saying something to Sarah, forming the words in his mind, but would stop just short of speaking, whereupon Sarah, disconcertingly, would say “What?” This would continue for the rest of their lives, at times unnerving him. He would know that he had not actually spoken, that he had only been thinking about speaking, but still Sarah would say “What?” Was she reading his mind? Whatever the case, he never actually spoke to her, but for the rest of their lives he went on thinking about speaking to her, and each time he thought about it, she would say “What?” We have seen, much earlier on, how at one time the young Sarah revered Jacob as if he were God, and did not want to marry him for that reason, and it seems to me that we stand for the rest of our lives in the same relation to God, always asking that “What?” which has no answer. Perhaps we should feel no greater pity for Sarah than we should feel for ourselves.
One thing-of-the-past that the people of Arkansas in their excruciating nostalgia yearned for most was a return to statehood. For although Arkansas had been the first state to leave the Confederacy, she had not yet been reaccepted into the Union. The Congress of the United States would not let her come home. Nostalgia in its deepest sense is a yearning for home. But the Congress, dominated by Thaddeus Stevens and his radical Republicans, had not only refused to allow any of the seceded states back into the Union but also passed the dread Reconstruction Act, which would throw the South into seven long and lean years of carpetbaggery. Jacob disliked the carpetbaggers even more than he disliked the Confederates, but he was caught between them and could do nothing. Both sides began to blame him for the failure of Arkansas to reenter the Union. They began to call him “Old Imbecility,” and to openly mock his country ways. He lost control of his legislature to them. He could no longer handle the supreme court justices, who ceased coming to his office to drink his mountain dew and listen to his tall tales. The supreme court declared unconstitutional his law that Arkansawyers who had borne arms against the United States were not eligible to vote, and this allowed the ex-Confederates to sweep back into government. But the carpetbaggers, or Republicans as they called themselves, gained control, and nominated one of their own, Powell Clayton, an ex-Pennsylvanian, to run for governor. Jacob could not have beaten him even if he were not infected with hopeless nostalgia and longing for Stay More. Shortly after the election in which Clayton took the governorship, Congress restored Arkansas to the Union.
One of the few utterances of Jacob Ingledew that found its way into recorded history was by virtue of Powell Clayton’s memoirs, written in his eighties after a distinguished career as governor and later U.S. Senator from Arkansas. Clayton reminisced about the day of his inauguration in midsummer, waiting in his carriage, seated beside the outgoing governor. He described the outgoing governor: mild blue eyes, tangled beard, long wavy locks of the mountaineer, wearing a suit of plain homespun. Clayton was wearing, by contrast, a suit of full broadcloth, with frock coat and wide wing collar; and he was wearing fine kid gloves. As the outgoing governor got into the carriage, he took a long look at the gloves, and then, Clayton recalled, Jacob Ingledew remarked, “Well, I reckon I never saw anyone but you wearing gloves in July! Only dudes do that!” To which Clayton, by his account, retorted, “Governor, it’s not the garb that makes the man; but in deference to you and especially in view of the character of the