National Republican., 1882-09-08

sociates of the crime of planning q mas
sacre of the 1887 whites of Choctaw
County by portion of its s,341 negroes
1t regards as morally certain the pos
session by Turner's survivors of n secret
connected with these charges which they
would sooner die than surrender. For
its honest denunciation of the hanging
by the mob it should have due credit.
The murder of Turner has removed ;"
the most energetic and powerful political
leader and organizer among the seven
thousand negroes of Choctaw County.
The Bourbons had just narrowly if at
all) escaped defeat in that county under
his management. How singular that a
written plot, four years old, for negro
war i'll Alabama should be found lying
around loose just in time to furnish
reason for hanging this dangerous and
effective worker against Bourbon Democ-
racy before he could organize the Con-
gressional campaign. The story seemed
so absurd that some of the Democratic
papers ridiculed it at first rs an inven-
ton. A Georgia Bourbon editor said
concerning it:
romantic telegraph operator in Alabama has
given our esteemed contemporaries, the Northern
Republ can organs, considerable trouble recently.
We allude to the remarkable story of the Chocaw
County plot which was telcgraphed North aud
placed i'll the hands ofthe Associated Press which,
in turn sowed 1t broadcast over the country =
The story, as our readers will remember, is a
very curious one, and 1t is altogether too elaborate
to have originated in Chocaw County. 1t was stated
thnt ns,,;, tha
cOncoctcd by negroes to murder the whites had
been discovered. The story was accompanied by
no explanations 1t was simply to the effect that
the papers disclosed plot concoctcd in 1878 for
numbering the whites on the 18th of September
1882 The papers were laid before the solicitor so
the story goes, a mass meeting of white and col.
orcd citizens was called, and, as q result of that
meeting, the ringleader in the plot was taken out
and hanged. We have seen no verifcation of this
incomprehenstJle story But the organs do not wait
for verifcations The unreasonable character of the
details do not strike them it is enough that the
matter has been sent over the wires, and that 1t
serves rs sort of sensational addition to Repubi-
can campaign material.
To us it seems incredible that the negroes should
plot to murder the whites, and it is more incred-
bic still that they should make a record of their
purposes.
But the negro thus acquitted by the
Georgia Bourbon editor, on. the ground
that the accusations against him were too
absurd for belief, was hung by the Az. 4 H..
bama Bourbons on the gy9,gnd that the
ABSURD story was nseTIy:Ciifrcly reliable when
certified Jytort,'r{d aitucsses
90 ,am muSiIffor e.. for the Bourbon uprising in
'4ilabama, and the hanging of the chair
man of Republican county committee,
in moment of evaporation, as pun
ishment for forgetting "his place" and
meddling with politics. We suppose he
thought that he might safely support the
Independent Greenback ticket. His vio-
lent death will be lesson to all negroes
who dare to fight Bourbonism in Alabama,
even under Independent native white
leadership. Native white Independents
will also proceed with caution, lest they,
too, be suddenly and "quietly hung"
Our readers will pardon the use of SO
much space over such trifle as the Choc-
taw outrage, while other papers are de-
voting columns to such vital questions
as the removal of John Wolff from fifty
dollar place in department, and the i'm
portance of having Chalmers beaten for
Congress by the ruse of running negro
as preteXt for making the ballot-boxes
show an apparent division of the anti
Bourbon vote. These gravermatters shall
hereafter have more attention.