Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-09-07

character, Republican, and natural
leader of his people. For some time past
it had been the practice of certain Bourbon
planters to compel the colored men who
worked for them TO vote the Democratic
ticket. On an election day one of these
Bourbons, named Carnathan, hitched up
his horses and went to take his hands to
the polls as usual. One of them, named
Manning, however, declined to vote the
Democratic ticket, saying that he had done
SO for years, and could not see that any
good had come to him from it. Carnathan
became furious, took Manning into stable,
tied him up, and logged him most brutally
with leather trace, having an iron hook
at the end. Manning's back was terribly
cut up, and he was for long time dis
abled. Turner heard of the outrage, and
persuaded the victim to prosecute the ruff
tianly Carnathan in the Federal Court, for
the State Courts have no justice for negroes
as yet. Carnathan was indicted, through
the energetic work Of Jack Turner, and of
| course he became the bitter enemy of the
man WHO had brought him to Justice.
This, however, might have been passed
over, had not Turner had the audacity
to act on the theory that colored citizens
possess equal political rights in Alabama.
He organized the colored vote in Choctaw
county for the Republican ticket, and he
proved himself so good politician that at
the election of August It'll the Bourbons
bad majority of only &c. 1t was evident
that If this active colored leader was not
stopped in his political career ne would
carry the county next time. He was
Chairman of the Republican County Com.
mittee, and his word was law with his fol.
lowers. So, ten days after the election, a
mob Of white scoundrels collected under
cover CT night, took Turner and his prin-
cipal followers, hanged the former, and
logged and tortured the latter, under the
thin pretense of conspiracy. 1t was, as
we surmised from the first, one of those
cowardly political outrages by the commits
sion of which the Southern people have
succeeded in retarding their own progress,
keeping capital and enterprise out of their
section, and sustaining in the Northern
mind the profound conviction that they
cannot be trusted with power again in the
councils OF the nation. Jack Turner was
as much martyr as John Brown. He
was engaged in noble cause. He was
organizing his people politically, and en-
abling them to utilize the suffrage conferred
upon them by the nation. For this he was
brutality murdered by mob of cowardly
white loafers, who, possessing no deserts
of any kind, swagger and strut about their
slovenly holdings, and because they are
lazy and ferocious and dissolute and pro-
fame, fatter themselves that they are
gentlemen" and the very salt of the
country.
One man like poor Jack Turner is worth
a battalion of such "white trash" as the
mob that murdered him, and until the
| better elements of the South realize that
truth, and act upon it until public opin-
ion in those States enables justice to be
| done in the Courts, and accords to every
honest man, no matter what his color,
equal protection and respect; the South
will continue to languish, will cry in vain
for capital, and will be doomed to appear
at each Presidential election as the
shocking example" which justiies the
country in voting down the Democratic
ticket. Here was man who was doing
nothing which it was not his right to do.
He was simply exercising the political
attributes which are the heritage of every
American citizen. He was working
towards higher and better things in poll
tics. He was sustaining and advancing
that Republican policy which every colored
man in the Union must support if he uu.
derstands his own interests. And for this
he was seized at midnight, taken from his
family and friends, and bsseIy murdered
under every accompaniment of insult and
humiliation that the mingled cruelty and
ASANSbg VI LIS utFlSe.
The contemptibly silly story which the
Choctaw county Bourbons invented as an
apology for their foul crime shows what
sort OF creatures intellectually they are.
Every schoolboy knew that the account of
negro conspiracy which was alleged to
have been proceeding for six yean was a
clumsy fiction. Negroes do not enter into
conspiracies. Negroes do not prepare elab.
crate written accounts of what theyintend.
The story of the bundle of papers is even
more preposterous than the 9th Il. The
plain truth, now first disclosed. 10 as we
have stated it. Jack Turnsz,s sIraurdered
by the Bourbons~because he was good
sItizs1 because he was bad one. He
n - killed because he hsd proved himself
more enlightened, intelligent and energetic
than the worthless white canaah which
arrogates to itself political supr smacy in
the nest Of barbarian ridden counties which
lies in that section. For Choctav county
is in the midst of veritabie " lark and
" bloody ground" 1t adjoins Sumter
county, the scene OF the Billings.
1vey assassinations, ard that again
abuts on kemper county, Missis.
sippi, made infamous by the
Chisolm massacre. The southwestern
portion of Alabama is in fact nearly all
missionary ground, but the missionaries
who go there ought to be we'll armed with
self-cocking revolvers and repeating rifles.
The murder of Turner and the outrage
upon his lieutenants shows that the old
detestable Bourbon spirit still lives at the
South. The same spirit has just been ex.
| hibited at the Arkansas election, where the
Republican voters were driven from the
polls, and a negro was lilled. Crimes like
this, however. react with disastrous effect
upon the counties and states which permit
aud condone them. TIE North never wifi
trust the national party which is in polit.
ical alliance with the South, so long a. such
atrocities continue to be perpetrated. For
: only too apparent that under Demo-
bic ADMINISTRATION there would not be
even She presen.s Of !ssE Play toward TIE
colored voters, but thai thsyi would, by
common consent, be red aced toNn state of
serfdorn and teysoris-n move oaflino and