New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1877-05-09
PAcIFIcATIoN In MISSISSIPPI
The Murdered Republicans Of Kem-
per County.

As the facts Of the assassination of the
principal white Republicans of Kemper
county, Mississippi, are becoming known,
the affair is shown to be in keeping with
like events at Coushatta when it was
thought necessary for the Democracy to
rid that section of country of the leaders
of the opposition party. The jackson
Pilot of last Saturday says:
In our kilograms will be found the par
ticulars of the massacre of Judge Chisholm
and other Republicans of Kemper county
on Sunday last. That helpless prisoners
should be butchered in cold blood in
country pretending to be Christian, seems
almost incredible; indeed after reading
the details one can but imagine that he
has been reading of some atrocity of the
Bashi- -Bazouks in Servia. The tiendish-
ness of this act of inhuman barbafity
reaches its climax when we come to con-
slider that in civilized and Christian
country men should by the officers of the
law be arrested under q pretense-dis-
armed, lodged in jail, and while in this
helpless condition, with his wife and
children, who go into the dungeon with
the father and brother hoping that wo-
mans presence would check the murder
Gus design of the mob, they are butch
cred, shot down in the presence of wife.
and daughter-then not satisfied with this
atrocity which should bring a blush to
the cheek of a Sioux Indian, they then
shoot down the daughter, young girl of
sixteen, refined and cultivated as she was
brave The Democratic authorities of
this place would not believe it when the
first report came that Judge Chisholm and
others had been murdered. The Vicks-
burg Herald hastens, as usual, to assure
the world that there was no politics in the
matter. 1t is the same old story with
which Republicans in the South have be-
come, alas, too familiar.
Every one of the victims was a promi-
nent Republican, and every man of the
bloodthirsty mob was bowling reform
Democrat "Still there was no politics
in it."
The following will show that should it
have been Rush that killed Gully, Judge
| Chisholm and the other Republicans could
in no way be implicated in the killing.
To begin with, the Gully and Rush trou-
bles began some six years ago. Rush and
the Gullys had quarrel which termin-
ated in street fight, in which Gully shot
Rush down, and after Rush fell he shot at
the Gully who was lately killed and killed
another Gully, for which he was acquitted
upon a trial before the courts. Since
that time, and up to short time ago,
! when Rush left the State, Gully has lost
no opportunity to attempt the assassina-
ton of Rush, and has fred at him sew
eral times in the dark, and on one occa-
sion did shoot and severely wound him
| (Rush). 1t is not to be presumed that
after man had gone through what Rush
had, while he lived in Kemper county,
that he would need the instIgation of ell
the white Republicans of that county to
arouse bim who had been so treacherous-
ly driven from his home to seek revenge
in the same treacherous way in which
Gully had been trying to deprive him of
his life. But Notwithstanding Rush had
Just cause to seek revenge on Gully, we
do not believe that Rush was the assas-
sin, for when Rush was last heard Of he
was in Arkansas, and he was known in
Kemper county by nearly every man,
| woman and child, it would be matter Of
almost impossibility for him to 60 and re-
main in the county long enough to have
an opportunity to do this deed without
being seen by parties who knew him. But
the pretext that he did the killing and
that Judge Chisholm and other Republic
ans were parties to it, furnished rare
opportunity to get rid of them. "They
were mean white Radicals and ought to
be killed" Does not everybody know
that if Judge Chisholm, Gilmer and the
others had been Dem ocrats, and similar
ly accused, they would not have been set
on aud slaughtered; they would not, per-
haps, have even been arrested. That
slaughter was part of the general White
League Democratic plan to rid the coun-
try Of leading Republicans. "Dead men
tell no tales" has been the pirates and
highwayman's watehword for ages. Dead
Republicans can make no opposition to
Democracy, is the watchword of the
White League of the South to-day.
No doubt the deed was perpetrated by
Gully's enemies in his own Democratic
party, and in order to clear themselves,
i and to rid the county of leading political
opponents, they trumped up pretext by
which they can lay the assassinationEo Eon
an innocent party, and cause the butchery
of innocent parties in the most cowardly
and brutal manner. Judge Chisholm and
all of the. other Republicans that were
slaughtered being natives of the State,
and Judge Chisholm himself being citi
zen OF that county for forty years, it car
not be said that they we're carpetbaggerf
who came to the county and State for the
purpose of plunder, but the crime of being
Republican, in the eyes of the White
Leaguers, is sufficient cause for the
butchery of any man.
Judge Chisholm being the leading Re
publican of his county and district ano
his being elected to every office 10 which
he aspired, until fall last, when he was de
feated for Congress by the White Leaguers
through their course of intimidation anG
violence perpetrated against the men who
wished TO vote for him, and the knowl
edge that in the future he would have
great influence with the majority of the
people, regardless of the changes of the
new policy of the administration nigh
bring about was doubtless the greatest in
centive for this most foul butchery. And
again, the greatest crime in the eyes o
the White League was that the Republi
cans they slaughtered were all and tht
only witnesses against the leaders Of tn,
{ White Leaguers who had been indicted
: by the United States grand Jury for thei
acts Of violence and intimidation, and a
. the court meets next week and their case
were likely to come up, no doubt this wa
as. much the cause which instigated tn
fendish, foul butchery as any other,
1t is most gratifying to know that Mrs
and MisL Chisholm, the wife and daughter
brayely defended the helpless father ant
son. All honor to the noble women VIII,
could, in that moment of supreme peril
overcome the natural weakness of thei