The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1884-03-19
To What Endl

Mississippi, was not an act OF individual
assassination, but an incident in the
course of an armed insurrection and
organized rebellion against the author
ity of the United States, extending not
merely throughout Copiah County, but
into several of the surrounding coun-
ties. 1t is not necessary in order that
mob movement may have the character,
in law, Of armed insurrection and rebel
lion that the people engaged in it shall
contemplate an overthrow of the exist
ing form OF government and the substi-
tuition OF a new one, as the Southern
rebels did in 1854. Shay's whisky
rebellion was complete rebellion,
though it contemplated only the defeat
of the enforcement OF a single Revenue
law. The Copiah County Rebellion
aimed to defy by military means and by
armed force the authority of the United
States in several counties, to the end OF
defeating in those counties so much of
the Reconstruction acts and OF the
amendments to the Constitution of the
United States as gave the colored race
civil and political rights, and especially
the right to vote, For this purpose the
white insurreetionists adopted essen
tally the same military means as were
adopted in 1904 by the rebellion led
by JEFF Davis. They organized forces
which publicly proclaimed defiance to
Federal law as their Object, viz, that
no man should be permitted to cor
ganize the blacks against the whites in
Copiah County, meaning that no white
man should be permitted to favor and
cooperate with the blacks in the exer-
else of the political rights given the
latter b. Federal law. They well knew
that under existing Federal law every
man had the same right to organize
blacks for party purposes as to organize
whites. Their crime was the same as
Calhouns would have been had he in
1888 organized an armed force to re-
sist the collection Of Federal duties, an
act for which President Jackson de-
clared he would hang Calhoun higher
than Haman should he attempt it.
Their crime was simply and BADLY
treason and rebellion aga inst the author
ity of the United States.
1t is quite immatetial that the authors
OF these crimes imagine that now that
the States are reconstructed and in the
Union no power can punish treason and
rebellion in the United States. 1t is
equally rs immaterial that the Govern
or Of Mississippi neglects and refuses to
either preserve order or to call upon the
President Of the United States to do so.
The precedent set by the United States
in some thirteen cases in 1860, of sup
pressing rebellion within q State with
out wait NC for a requisition from the
Governor thereof, and, indeed, where
in nearly every case the Governor and
Legislature formed part Of the rebellion,
must eH'ectually set at rest the old no.
tion that the United States derives its
power to suppress armed instruction
in State from the request of the Gov
ernor OF that State
The Constitution OF the United States
makes it indeed the duty of President
10 suppress an insurrection within a
State on the request Of its Governor,
even though the insurrection be not
against the United States at ALL but
only aimed to subyert or resist the State
authorities and State laws. Such case
was that of the Dorr instruction in
Rhode Island. It did not attack Fed
eral authority, and in such cases itmay,
and even then possibly in some cases it
might not be prudent or necessary to
await the request of the Governor.
The Copiah County case, however. is
obscured by no such question. The
object OF the insurrection was and is to
defeat and overthrow the authority of
the United States in those counties and
largely throughout the State in the
matter of colored men voting. In this.
case the sovereignty of the United
States is as directly assailed by Ras
Wheeler and his hundreds "of travel
ing clubs and his committees Of
twenty-four from. each Supervisors
district" who ride around with bands
of music, firing their cannon into
negroes houses, shooting and hanging
colored men unless they promise to
vote the Democratic ticket. and pour
ing their buck-shot INTO white Repub-
licans of high character and uni
versally loved, as it was assailed by
Beauregard and his nineteen thousand
troops firing on Fort Sumter. The
state of insurrection in this case began
when these Illegal bodies began to Or
ganize; it continued as one uninter-
rupted act of the same insurrection, so
as to take in every murder as an in
cident in the general crime. The fact
that it is continuous and locally con-
trolling insurrection is proved by the
fact that the whole populace bow to it,
including the courts and the Grand
Jury, who become accomplices in the
insurrection by refusing to find bills or
even to investigate. The armed insur-
rection will constitute q continuing
crime until the authority of the Gov
ernGlent is restored and the partici-
pators brought to punishment.
The Presidents $ omission to do 80 bv
no means condones the right or lessons
the duty of Congress to pass laws re-
quiring him to do so. The failure OF
the present Congress to pass such a law
would not lessen the duty of the next
to do so.
One point the people of the South and
the Southern Representatives in Con-
gress may as well understand. There
is a latent power in the people OF the
Omitted States which will keep on grow
ing in will and determination until Ras
Wheeler and his Copiah County insur-
rectionists are not merely suppressed,