The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1879-02-27

worth? =? Or life, or liberty, or any other
treasure dear to man?
Forty miles southeast of Marshall is
Shreveport, the beginning of Louisiana
There a Southern gentleman playfully
informed me that Mr.. Leonard failed to
get his votes into the ballot boxes be
cause the threefold was on one paper ar
there were three boxes. They refused
to receive them in one and distribute
them to their several departments. They
had been printed" he said, lat St Louis
or somewhere else, and were not adapted
to the new arrangement
Surprised that an astute leader of a
party should not know enough to in
struct his followers to tear their ballot
into three parts, if such was the new de-
cision, inquired of my colored friends
how it was They said that, when they
found this trick was being played, they
proceeded to divide the ballot; and then
found that their names were not on the
printed register Though they had paid
taxes, some of them for several years,
and they had seen their names on the
official written register, yet they had not
been transferred to the printed list
They were thus violently wrested of their
rights.
That night yet more violent deed of
blood was done. These playful jests of
Marshall and Shreveport by which hun
dreds of citizens were deprived of their
citizenship. and by which legally elected
court was violently elected and body
of men who never claimed a legal right
to their seats were inducted into office,
were only the tappings and toyings of
the panther before it strikes its paw in to
its prey. Hencefor.h the stroke is bloody
and deadly The very night l was there
a boat was coming up the Ped River
| (rightly named, red with streams of I'm
ion bloody bearing witnesses to testify in
a United States court concerning the
outrages that had occurred in that vicin-
ity. 1t landed, ostensibly for trade or
passengers. 1t was boarded, ostensibly
by officers of the State. Two witnesses
were taken off, and have never been
heard from since. They will never be
until the grave shall give up its dead
and the great day of His wrath shall
come. Such is the protection the mighty
majesty of the United States grants her
witnesses, whom she summons to her
courts, and allows to be hung on the way
thither, and makes no sign of wrath or
even of complaint. Had those who seiz-
ed them been Indians, she would have
ravaged all that settlement with fire and
sword unless the murderers had been
given up; and. when given up, she would
| have hung them to the nearest tree. But
the murderers were white men, and the
murdered, "piggers" and SO, though the
| former were her bitterest enemies and
the latter her warmest friends, and even
obeying her official mandate, she eats her
Christmas dinners and wipes her smooth
face, and says: at can't be helped;
ut is the outcome of the war; at will
adjust ITSELF; 1--WE have deprived our
| al oF II &c
tervention.' Better let the witnesses
alone. then, than to lure them into an
ambush and desert them to their foes
and ours.
Even so in South Carolina, two witness
ses-clergymen of character and repute,
friends of mine-after being summoned
to the United States Court, are arrested,
Immediately on leaving the national
courtroom, by a State Court, on false
charges, and would to-day be lying in
Jail, but for ball. subject to rearrest and
punishment if they presume to appear
again on the witness-stand, at the call of
the National Government. How palsied
is that arm that once was clothed in SOW
ereign strength! How contemplate a
nation that allows the witnesses to frauds
| upon her own elections to be seized and
hung, and she dumb and weak before the
gigantic atrocityl
But, blood once tasted, you shall now
have your full thereof.
A week after this sight and hearing of
the national protection of its own polite
al rights, was threading my way up the
Bayou Teche. a narrow pass, lined with
sugar plan tations, lovely live oaks, come
ly mansions, sugarmills. and other signs
of civilization. The air was shrewish,
blowing stff1y from the north; but oak
leaf and grass blade were scarcely touch
ed by the chill. 1t was Longfellow's
realm of romance, where his sweetest
poem luxuriates in its sweetest lines
The Bay of Atchafalaya, the region of
perpetual summer; the sturdy huntsman,
Evangeline's protector the dropping
moss-everywhere one saw how faithfully
he had wrought his picture.
Alas he left one scene from the can
vas Some forty miles up the Bayou lies
the town of Franklin, village of ten or
fifteen hundred souls, was going to say
l doubt if l should say it. So will you.
A week or two before l passed by it,
young man, named Gilbert Newman,
clerk of the precinct, an orderly and in
telligent youth, an orphan, whose name
was taken from his benefactor, the Rev
Dr. Newman, had the official record of
the votes in his possession To get pos
session of it, band of regulators" en-
tered his house at night shot at him and
his wife as they lay in bed were so ex-
cited that they aimed too high, and the
headboard, not the heads, received their
bullets. He sprang out, crept under the
bed, and escaped. She leaped upon the
floor, and, throwing her arms about one
Of the assassins, to prevent his shooting,
cried out Don't shoot my husband!'
The murderers thought that he was the
one to whom she was clinging They,
therefore, proceeded to comply with her
request by putting shower of bullets
into the person.
He fell by the hands of his own com
panons in crime. Mr.. Newman escaped.
II he returns, he will meet the fate they
intended then to mete out to him. |
saw and talked with him, and learned
this story of liberty and national protec-
ton from his own lips.
Less fortunate was another colored
youth of that town, of such an honorable
name and dishonorable conduct Think
of Franklin the Abolltionist, and then OF
Franklin Louisiana He was accused of
insulting white lady. No proof was
given or desired. Baffled of their game
and maddened with the loss of their
companions life, they seized on the
youth, took him before magistrate, who
had him horribly whipped without con
viction or even form of trial, put him
in Jail, professedly for punishment on the
morrow, but actually to locate him
where he could be easily seized. For
that is the chief use of the Jail in many