The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1876-11-02

wind and he is sure TO be ambuscaded. But
more than this. The whites regard Republi-
can of their color with tenfold the vindictive-
ness with which they look upon the negro.
Scores of white Republicans are hurrying in
alarm to the newspaper offices TO insert cards in
which they renounce their party and profess
conversion to Democracy. If these men hang
back and refuse or neglect to join the precinct
club or the nearest military company, their con-
duct is reported to the township meeting. A
committee is appointed to request an explana-
ton. They call on the suspected man at their
earliest convenience. If he be sensible he will
submit profuse apologies and regrets, and htir-
riedly take up his rifle and follow them to the
dril-room. Three or four white circuit judges
have been dragooned into conformity, and the
crowd of lesser lights threatens to absorb every
white Republican in the State except Governor
Chamberlain and the United States Senators.
GONE MAN KILLED."
If a white man refuses to Join the precinct
club If white mans loyalty to the party is
suspected ; if a white Republican persists in qis
opinions, he is spotted marked, doomed. He is
scowled at If he walks abroad. If he passes a
crowd of lettering whites at street corner an
ominous silence falls on them till he is out Of
hearing. No warning is given him. No mid
night visits are now paid or Kuklux missives
despatched. The whites have found by bitter
experience that such things are boomerangs,
which return with tcniold force to injure the
thrower. They manage the matter better now.
They wait till an obnoxious man whom they
have doomed as a victim chances to stand or
pass near them, say on the public square, at the
post Office, in bar-room, on the street. A
crowd of white desperadoes will cluster near
him or follow him. They appear to be drunk,
and begin to quarrel over some silly matter
having nothing to do with politics. Several
bystandcrs come up and take sides. Finally
blows are exchanged, pistols drawn, and
regular free fight occurs. Shots are fired
by all the party. Yet, strange to say, when
order is restored, it is found that not of the
combatants is injured while the poor Republi-
can has been struck By several random shots and
killed An account of the aiiray appears in the
press (the press is almost wholly Democratic)
under the heading, "Street ROw-One Man
Killed" Not only are single men picked Off in
this way, but sham fights are arranged by white
rutflans on some non-poitical pretense, which
swell to the proportion of riots, and in which
several Republican hystanders are killed by
chance shots, while none OF the combatants are
hurt OF course, the authors of these deeds 90
unpunished. in the first place, it is impossible
to tell who fired the shot. Then it is unsafe for
any one to indict anybody about it, or for the
officials to be too Jealous in investigating or
prosecuting. But if an assassin does get into
trouble by imprudence. his comrades, who of
course compose most ofthe bystanders, are called
as witnesses, and swear him out safely by giving
in doctored testimony.
THE MISSISSIPPI PLAN.
] now find myself carried back to the time of
secession. Then Southerner dared avow
Union sentiments Then there were thousands
of them in the South, but they were ruthlessly
subjected to system of terrorism, and had to
choose between conformity and almost certain
death and with hardly an exception they con-
formed. To-day there are thousands Of whites
forced into this Confederate revival against their
judgment and inclination but they must con-
form or take the consequences. They conform,
and then, to avoid the inputaton of lukcwarm-
ness, they endeavor to prove their sincerity by
outdonC their comrades in violence. The same
men head this movement who led the State
into secession. They have thoroughly revived
the policy of intimidation. Talk of the
blacks being intimidated! Ii ia through the in
timidation Of the whites that the intimidation of
the black is rendered possible. The election is
to be carried on the Mississippi plan and part
of the plan, be it remembered. was the intmda-
tion OF the whites. Wade Hampton is as much
a M!ssissippian as a South Caronian. 1t is true
that he is descended from Carolinians famous
III the Revolution, that his ancestors have al
ways lived in this State, that he himself is a
citizen of this State, and that the family home
stead is in the city OF Columbia. But besides
the immense estates he owned in South Carolina
before the war, he had vast demesnes in Nlissis-
sippi and other Southern States. This will not
seem surprising when | mention the fact he pos
scssed 10000 acres of land in fee simple, and
owned 1000 slaves. Now the war took from him
the bulk of his property. But SO much remained
after all his losses that he is at this day the
wealthiest man in the southern States. Most of
his property now, however, is in Mississippi.
He has abandoned by far the larger part of his
ancestral estates in South Carolina. Though
his home is in Columbia he spends half his time
on his plantations in Mississippi. lie has one
plantation there on which 500 of his former
slaves are employed. so well has he been able to
keep up this old-plantation plan while the small
farm system has been becoming well nigh uni
versal The fact | desire to call attention to is
this Hampton was in Mississippi prior to the
last election there, which the Democrats carried
by the shotgun policy. The similarity of the
methods employed by the Democrats in the can
vass going on here now, with Hampton as their
leader, forces me to the conclusion that the ex-
pertinent is to be repeated here.