The weekly Floridian. [volume] (Tallahassee, Fla.) 1867-19??, 1880-08-31

jacksonville Union. August I'll
The Republican writers and speakers In
Florida seem 70 have lost ell memory Of public
events In the State previous to 1873. They are
greatly excited ever the question whether We
will havea fair count and are constantly ailud-
ing TO the Brevari fraud Of 1873, but Il any Of
them have ever alluded to the stupendous fraud
of 1875, during ulis campaign, We have failed to
hear of Il. There are few Of them who did NOT
have q hand in that iniamy. 1t will do them
good to think over the royal times they used 10
have cheating the Democrats. And they would
doit again If they had the chance.
The infamous fraud in 1875 was but a
continuation of similar frauds which
commenced at the election in 1868 when
ballot-boxes were unblushingly stuffed in
the interest of one of the two Republican
candidates for Governor. In that elec-
ton there were three candidates for Gov
ernor-Sam. Walker of Leon and Harri-
son Reed, Republicans, and Colonel G.
w. Scott, Democrat. No intelligent man
of any party ever doubted that Scott was
elected by plurality of votes and that
he was defeated by fraud. In the cleo
ton two years later the frauds were
holder. That was the year in which bal
lot-boxes with secret slides, through which
votes could be stuffed at pleasure, were
first introduced. They were used in sew
eral counties, conspicuously in Leon and
Madison. The maker of them was Rob
ert Williams, colored, now dead, who
made them on a plan furnished by Re-
publicans here. While the election was
going on in Tallahassee slide of one of
the boxes fell out and the ballots followed,
failing into the lap of one of the Repub-
lican inspectors and thus exposed the
whole cheating scheme. In Hamilton the
frauds were 80 outrageous that the Repub-
licans of Suwannee county met and de-
nounced them. At the colored school
house in Lake City votes were stuffed into
the box by the hundred, while the Vel
low Bluff Fraud" in Duval was only
equalled by that at Archer in Alachua
in 1875, which it resembled in its minutest
particulars But the growing fraud in 1870
was in stealing the returns from the post
office and the suppression of the votes of
nine counties, eight of which gave major
tiles for Bloxham and Niblack, candi-
dates for Lieutenant Governor and Con-
gress, and elected them. In the subse-
quent elections of 1872, IA and '76,
frauds were continued to be perpetrated.
In fact the Republicans have never car
ried an election in Florida except by
fraud, unless possibly the one in 1872
when the conservatives were handicapped
with the candidacy of Greeley and their
opponents had the advantage of Grants
popularity. Even in that election, how
ever, the Democrats carried the Legisla-
ture, but their majority was counted
out" as usual. The fraud in 1878 in
Brevard has been universally condemned
by the Democrats, but in no instance has
word Of denunciation been heard from
Republicans against their own persistent
frauds running through successive cleo
tions. No attempt was ever made to pun
ish the perpetrators, while the most no.
torious of them, like Bowes who stuffed
the little jokers ?" into the ballot-box in
Leon and Vance and Black who altered
the returns in Alachua, have been re-
warded with Offices by Hayes, who got
the Presidency through their viIlainy with
the aid of a Returning Board of infamous
memory.