The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1871-08-17
From the Charleston News, August lO.]
BIGAMISr BOWEN REDlVIVUS,
Extraordinary Reception OF the
Martyr on Edisto Island, b. c.
The Darkies Wild with Enthusi.
asn Over Their Beloved.


Martyr on Edisto Island, h. c.
The Darkies Wild with Enthusi.
asm over Their Beloved.
The belligerent Bowen has again as
sumed his war paint and feathers, and
is on the war-path. His plan Of cam
paign is to lure the credulous colored
masses to retired groves upon the
islands OF the sea by such devices as
the seductive ginger cake and the exu-
berant root beer, and, having exhibited
to them such dainties, to inflict upon
them speeches from improvised and
rustic platforms, wherein he lays his
hand upon his heart, and begs to know
if they, his audience, whom he is glad
to see aud proud to call bis brethren,
can believe of him, who thus addresses
them, the scaudalous and wicked tales
that are spread broadcast by those ma
licious emissaries of the Evil One, by
which he begs to be understood as
meaning the Democrats, whose hearts
are 'deceitful above all things and DIES.
perately wicked? Whereupon his
dusky audience, with lively sense Of
ginger cake to come, respond with
Shouts Of Hear, hear" Xxi yiT
"Bress de Lamb" aud in divers other
incoherent and irrelevant manners, ex-
press their hearty reverence for the
gentle Bowen, and their high apprecia-
ton of the bovine barbecue. A love
feast of this character took place last
Saturday night at the camp ground on
Edisto Island. 1t is described with
gushing enthusiasm by some OF its at
tendants, and from all accounts 1t must
have been a sort OF cross between q
colored camp meeting and Voudou
incarnation. The ambitioue Bowen ex.
horted and expostulated, bera,ed and
besought and pumped the excitement
in his shouting audience up to fever
heat. He argued and they applauded,
he gesticulated and they roared, he
danced and they Frustrated them
selves in commissions Of delight,
until the audience resolved itself
into a promiscuous, squirming'
nerspiripg mass of odoriferous en-
tbusiasm. Men shouted and women
howled, the little pickaninnies lost their
ginger cakes by being crushed to Nub'
Ian iellies in the seetblng mass the
saturnalian echoes resounded from the
trees and scared the solemn owls down
from their resting places, who circled
round the scene and gazed with bigeyed
wonder. Next a rush was made tor
Bowen by the ELUSIVE shades, who re-
fused to be pacified except by shaking
hands with their new apostle. They
hustled him off of the platform, and
stretching their numbers out in two
long lines, the shaking of hands began.
The Martyred orator passed down. the
centre, his arms on either side working
nm and down, as seized by the dusky
Gauntlet and looking like the levers OF
an cratic pump. Old blind men. tooth.
less and tottering, came and put their
hands upon him becase they wanted to
ace dis man Bowen" women, jostled out
of the line by the stronger men,
reached their hands through the ranks
nlucked the hem of Bewen's garments,
and shouted with rapture, 81 touched
umI I touched umEo and mothers
brought rags and handkerchief, aiAia
them up against their new found Moses