The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1876-10-28
The Eayonet Eug-a-Boo.

A vast amount is said by Democratic journals
and Democrats generally about the Government
sending troops to South Carolina and some other
Southern States for the purpose of preserving or
der there and protecting people in their rights
A great deal of concern is manifested and holy,
hypocritical horror in prstence of its being mon
strous outrage; that no necessity exists or ever
has existed for such procedure. 1t is, indeed,
pretended that no outrages, riots, murders, me1a-
cings, intimidatons, ETC., have occurred in South
Carolina by rife clubs and other lawless bands
whereby Republicans, either white or colored,
we're, or would be, molested. All this is asserted
in the face of what is clearly known to the contra
~. Never was there so bare-faced a misrepresen-
tation of fact. The Greenvie massacre of itself
is sufficient practical evidence to the contrary.
The boast, as We are told, of Gen. Wade Hamp-
ton and other Democratic politicians that in the
coming election their party will carry the State
creates pleasing surprise and no little curiosity
for South Carolina, a full turn out of its voting
population, shows Republican preponderance of
twenty-five thousand votes; and as the intense in
terest felt by the inhabitants in the actual contest
viii quite certainly insure the presence at the polls
of every ablebodied elector the pledge of the OPP
position leaders involves mighty mystery. Some
idea of the plans upon which these prophets base
their reckoning may be gathered from recent
speech Of Gen. Gray, of their most distinguish
ed speakers 1t is by resort to what he calls 'the
shotgun policy" that this extraordinary miracle is
to be worked in other words, every black Repub
lican voter who proposes to exercise the franchise
guaranteed him by the amended Constitution is to
be prevented by the easy eXpedient of shooting
him dead in his tracks, bullets thus exercising that
wholesome restraint upon ballots which they have
SO benefcially exerted in Texas, Louisiana and
Mississippi. The programme has the charm of
Doric simplicity, saves for instance, the extrava
CANT expenditure involved in colonizing indepen-
dent voters from adjoining States, where they are
likely to be needed, and viii be seriously missed
Besides, the ballot of q Republican once fairly
dead will be comfortably out of the way in future
contests. General Gray is evidently sagacious
as he is humane"
Had not Federal troops been sent to Louisiana
some two or more years ago when the bloody riot
and resistance to law occurred in New Orleans that
State might have been drenched in blood and for
ever disgraced by assinations, and would have
done So as was made manifest by incipient acts
had it not been for the opportune of the
Government in sending troops among them to
command the peace. 1t is all very well to say
what they will not do, or what they have no in
tention of doing, but it is safest, judging from
what has been done, to guard effectively against
what might, and in all reasonable probability,
would be- Better, therefore, take time by the fore
lock. Nobody complains against troops being sent
to South Carolina, elsewhere, to preserve order
and compel obedience to law, except Democrats
who had hoped to carry "soIid South" by rife
clubs, etc., at the approaching election for Tiden
and Hendricks through instrumentalites of intim-
idatOn and violence, such previously enacted in
Mississippi, Louisiana and other Southern States