The daily gazette., 1880-09-09
From the N. Y. Sun.
Shall IL Be Done Again +?

Shall IL Be Done Again?
In 1873 the Federal Supervisor of
Elections in this city, a most reck-
less partisan, caused complaints to
be sworn out against several thou
sand citizens of foreign birth, who,
as he contended, held illegal and
invalid certificates Of naturalization.
Official notice was given that such
complaints were in existence, and
persons holding the naturalization
papers in question were called upon
to come up and surrender them {;
otherwise, they were informed, they
could not avoid arrest and persecu-
ton. Under this menace and COM
pulsion, more than three thousand
men went up to the Supervisor and
surrendered their papers. This
method of intimidation thus availed
to deprive that number of persons
of the certificates which gave them
a right to vote, and to prevent their
offering and casting their ballots.
This, however, was not enough.
Some thousands still remained who
would not be intimidated in that
way; and of these, several hundred
were actually arrested and brought
before q United States Commits
sioner on the charge of being
possessed of fraudulent papers, and,
being frightened by their arrest,
they thereupon gave their papers
up.
Yet many still persisted in voting
and on election day large number
of these citizens, refusing to be in.
timidated, presented themselves al
the polls and out of this unterrified
class more than six hundred were
actually arrested at the very ball ot
boxes, and a large proportion OF
them were imprisoned during the
greater part of the day in a sort OF
prison, or iron cage, attached to the
Supervisors office, whence they were
brought before a Commissioner fol-
an official examination. In fact, il
was not until 9 o'clock in the even.
ing of election day that these exami
nations were finally completed.
The chief purpose appears to have
been to prevent these citizens from vot-
ing. One of them. Mr.. Edwin j. DEM
ing, a superintendent in the establish
ment of A. Il. Stewart Il Co., was ar.
rested as he offered to vote-he had vo
ted many times before on the same pa
pers. Bail was offered for him, but il
was refused by the Commissioner; and
Mr.. Denning was not released until he
had given his promise that he would
not vote now. "That," he said in his
sworn testimony, "was the only way il
which he was allowed to 90"
Among all these parties one alone
Peter Coleman by name, obtained al
actual judicial examination. Being
committed TO Ludlow street Jail by the
Commissioner, his case was brought be-
fore that upright and fearless magistrate
Judge Blatchford, upon write of hdb
eas corpus; and, after complete inves
tigation into the whole subject, the
Judge discharged Coleman holding thai
the naturalization papers for voting un
der which Coleman had been arrested
and imprisoned, were legal and ualiC
papers. This was, in effect, decision
that the whole preceding Of the Sup
ervisor was without foundation in Law
or in fact, and was mere act ofoppres
sion and outrage perpetrated under cove
of the abused authority of the people o
| the United States.
And yet, by such methods, severa
thousand citizens who had right II
vote were prevented from voting. 1t j
a modate calculation that five thousan
citizens were thus deprived of the cleo
tive franchise. And now the question
whether this outrage is to be repeater
in 1880 by the same agent for the bene