National Republican. (Washington City (D.C.)) 1872-1888, 1881-03-15
A Model of Bourbon Fairness---The
ShOe-String District in Mississippi.

In the State of Mississippi, which was
the first in the South after the war to
substitute brute force for voting as the
road to political power, there is a con-
gressienal district known as the Shoe
String District. This designation comes
from the fact that when the bull-dozing
Bourbons took the State by the shotgun
plan the mob-chosen Legislature, in
gerrymandering the State into congress
sional districts, decided to create one dis
trict which should embrace all the coun-
ties along the Mississippi River, which
were chiefly populated by negroes, and
all the other districts would then contain
majority Of white voters This was
done, and as the one negro district was
merely the riverside counties, from one
narrow, it was called the "Shoe-string
District" There was in this district
colored majority of about II 900 votes, to
say nothing of the white Republicans
who may have braved the dangers of Bour-
bon domination to maintain their resi-
dence there.
When the Bourbons saw what they had
done they repented them of the remnant
of decency of which they had suspected
themselves, and proceeded by felonious
methods to take, steal, and carry away
the free gift they had made. Hence the
presence of Chalmers in the House of
Representatives and the absence ofJohn
r. Lynch.
Mr.. Lynch proposes this time to con-
test the seat of Mr.. Chalmers. The fol-
lowing statement of this contest is OBJ
tanned from Mr.. Lynch himself If free
government is not mockery Mr.. Lynch
will be sustained by all respectable repre-
sentatives of Doth political parties. 1t ap-
pears that in spite of distractions and
hinderances on the part of the election
officers, which resulted in the disfran-
chisement of thousands of Republican
voters, the whole number of votes polled
for member of Congress was 21,172, of
which number Mr.. Lynch claims to have
received between $4,000 and 10000. In
the counties of Adams, Claiborne, Jeffer-
son, Washington, and Wilkinson there
were not less than 5000 votes counted and
returned for Chalmers that were polled for
Lynch. Giving Chalmers the benefit of
these frauds, the vote of the district as
returned by the precinct inspectors to
the county commissioners was as fol-
lows: Lynch, 10,9l5; Chalmers, 10,-
257. After the party managers
saw that Chalmers was defeated in spite
of the frauds that were committed in his
behalf, they then appealed to the county
commissioners to throw out votes enough
to return him elected any way. Of course,
the appeal was not in vain. The COM
missioners in seven counties threw out
6,6O7 votes-5,522 for Lynch and LOSS for
Chalmers. Two thousand and twenty
nine Republican and twenty Democratic
votes were thrown out in Warren county
for the alleged reason that they had
printers dash on the face of the ballot.
Although the same kind of tickets were
used throughout the district and in many
other parts of the State by Republicans,
Democrats, and Greenbackers, yet they
were thrown out on account of the print
er's dash in no county but Warren
Chalmers charged that the dashes
were put on the tickets so as to enable the
colored men who cannot read to distin-
gIish the Republican from the Demo
cratic ticket. This charge has been
completely, and effectually disproved by
the testimony that has been taken. But
even if this charge were true, it could not
have operated to the disadvantage of
Chalmers, for the reason that every pre-
cinct in that county and every county in
the district were supplied with large num-
bers of counterfeit tickets. The only diff
ference between these tickets and the