Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1877-09-20
RetribufiOn at Last.

/ We have but little commlSeratlon Ior tif
plunderers who have recently been indicted a
Columbia, South Carolina, for various crime
ranging from embezzlement to forgery. Pub
lie officers who betray the trust reposed IL
them ought to be held to strict accountabili-
ty, and no sympathy for their personal o
political misfortunes should be permitted tt
shield them from punishment. OF the persons
designated in the Columbia indictments as
conspirators, defaulters, thieves and forgers,
all have been Republican politicians of more
or less prominence, but this circumstance
should not be allowed to have a feathers
weight in determining their guilt or innocence.
They must stand or fall by the facts, and ii
these are against them their supposed services
in behalf of the cause of human freedom and
equal rights cannot save them from the pun
ishment which they deserve.
We have no faith whatever in the frequent
assurances telegraphed from Columbia and
Charleston that there is nothing partisan in
these prosecutions The fact that Senator
Cochrane, Chairman of the Legislative Inves- :
tigating Committee, is a Republican, has been
reiterated 81 often that it is becoming rather
monetonous, and as for the eight colored men
reported to be on the Columbia Grand Jury,
they will soon be as famous as the eight gen.
tIemen whose votes were recorded as the judg-
ment of the Electoral Commission. If all of
Senator Cochrane's colleagues on the Investi-
eating Committee were Republicans and the
Grand Jury were unanimously cOlored, the
political character of the proceedings against
the late officers of the State government could
not be concealed. For more than a year there
has been fierce, intolerant public sentiment
in South Carolina, backed by display of
physical force that has borne down the courts
from the highest to the lowest, and has put
grand and petit juries under duress. All the
judges hastened to get out of the storm by
ceasing to oppose it, with two exceptions, and
they were promptly legislated out of Office A
colored juror would no more dare to resist the
popular demand for the punishment of the
men charged with various offences of a semi
political nature, than he would dare to organ
ize Republican club. . 8sst -s1- 4
But while We refuse to accept the discaim-
er which is reiterated from day to day by
those who want to make it appear in the North
that equal and exact justice is to be meted out
to Democrats and Republicans, we are far
from insinuating that the men who are now
under indictment do not deserve all the pun
ishment that they are likely to get. And it is
the hope that justice will be done to the un-
principled rascals, of native and foreign birth,
who conspired together to plunder the treas
ury of ''the PROSTATE State" that has recon-
ciled honest Northern Republicans to the very
questionable methods by which the late State
government was overturned. Governor
Chamberlain, with all his ability and his good
intentions, was not able to do the work which
has been done by the Hampton government,
aided by the terrorism TO which we have al
ready referred. Woodruff and Jones would
not have turned States evidence to save
themselves from the popular fnry if the Re-
publican State government had been permitted
10 stand.
The newspapers, however, have fallen into
great mistake in crediting the Hampton gov
ernment with the discovery of the frauds for
which these men have been indicted. They
are all from five TO nine years old, and have
formed the principal stock in trade of the op-
position party in South Carolina ever since the
first administration of Gov Scott. On three
occasions the Republican party divided into
two hostile factions, the weaker faction going
into a coalition with the Democrats for the
purpose of defeating the men who were sup
posed 10 have been concerned in these trans
actions. At each successive session of the
Legislature the rascalities of certain disrepu-
table politicians were exposed, and of the
whole fifteen who have been indicted, if we
may except F. de Cardozo and l.. Cass Carp
enter, there is not man whose reputation is
one whit worse to-day than it was in 1872.
Governor Chamberlain fought them all, ex-
posed them all, and pracured his own defeat
by mourning their enmity. He always had
confidence in Cardoza, however, and we think
that gentleman will come out all right in the
enc. He is charged with paying claim for
which the Legislature had neglected to make
an appropriation, which may have been done
without any criminal intent. Leaving out
Cardoza, all of the men indicted are of the old
Scott-Moses ring, most of whom were bitterly
opposed to Chamberlain. Scott and Moses
tried to secure immunity for themselves by
coming out for Hampton early in the canvass.