The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1886-05-27


the country in dead Of night, whipping
prominent Republican whites and negroes
to death, or shooting or hanging them if
thought advisable, such terror would fall
upon the Republican colored voters that
they would keep away from the polls, and
consequently the white Democrats, unde-
tered by such Influences, and, on the con-
trary, eager to take advantage of them,
would poll not only full vote. but ma
jority vote, on all questions, whether involv-
ing mere election of Democratic officials or
otherwise; and, where intimidation of this
or any other kind should fail, then n resort
TO be had To whatever devices would be
found necessary to make a fraudulent count
and return, and thus secure Democratic
triumph; and furthermore, when evidences
of these intimida'ions and frauds shouldbe
presented to those people of the Union who
believe in every citizen of this free Repub-
lie having one free vote and that vote fair
ly counted, then to laugh the complaints
out of court with the cry that such stories
are not true, are campaign lies devised
solely for political effect, and are merely
the production of Republican outrage
mills ground out to order.
This plan was first thoroughly tried in
Mississippi and has hence been called the
Mississippi plan. SO magically effectual
was it that, with variations adapted to To-
cality and circumstances, this Mississippi
plan soon enveloped the entire South in its
meshwork of fraud, barbarity, and blood.
The massacres and other outrages, while
methodical, were remittent, wavelike-
sometimes one Southern State, sometimes
another-and occurring in years of hot pol
itical conflict until one after another of
those States had, by these crimes, been
again brought under the absolute control
of the old rebel leaders"
Briefly touching on the attempt to buy
the Presidency in 1876, and upon the po-
tency of the tariff agitation in securing
Democratic defeat in 1880, the author men
tons the result in 1884 in these words:
AT last, after an exciting campaign, the
Presidential election of 1884 was held, and
for the first time since 1856 the old free
trade Democracy of the South could rejoice
over the triumph of their Presidential can
didate.
Great was the JOY of the Solid South.
At last its numberless crimes against per-
sonal freedom and political liberty would
reap generous harvest. At last participa-
ton i'll rebellion would no more be regarded
as a blot on the political escutcheon. At
last commensurate rewards for all the long
years of dishonorable waiting, and of hard
work in ght-ridings, and house burnings,
and niger whippings, and niger shoot
ings, and niger hangings, and ballot-box
stuffings, and all the other dreadful doings
| to which these old leaders were impelled
! by a sense of solid Southern patriotism,
| and pride OF race, and lust for power,
would come, and come in profusion.
Grand places in the Cabinet and foreign
missions for the old rebels of distinction,
now chiefs of the Solid Southern con-
! spiracy, and for those other able Northern
Democrats who had helped them during or
since the rebellion; fat consulates abroad
for others of less degree; postoftices with
out stint for the lesser lights-all this, and
more, must come. The long hidden light
of glorious day was about to break"
In the closing chapterit is shown that the
Northern people, because their own State
| Governments yet are free, fail to see that n
republican form of government has ceased
| to exist in a part of the States; that there
can be no Republic where part of the peo-
pie hold all the power, and the rest are kept
in subsection by terrorism; that all rights
which the Constitution intended to guaran-
tee to the people are now, and for years
have been, persistently denied in certain
| States; and that the Constitution makes it
! the duty of Congress to guarantee to every
| State n republican form of government,
which it has not done.
The closing thoughts may best be given
in Gen. Logans own words:
Were Abraham Lincoln able bodily to
revisit the United States to-day, how his
keen gray eyes would open in amaZement
to find that many legitimate fruits of our
| Union victory had been filched from us; that
save the honorable few who, accepting the
! legitimate results of the war, were still
honestly striving for the success of principles
J harmonizing with such results, and inuring
to the general welfare-they who strove
with all their might to wreck the Govern
ment were now--through the fraudulent
and forcible restriction of voters in their
right to vote-at the helm of the state;
that those who sought to ruin the nation
had thus wrongfully usurped its rule; that
! free trade-after running amuck' of panic
and disaster from the birth of the republic
| to the outbreak of the rebellion, with whose
failure it should naturally have expired
| was now terminated and stood dehantly
threatening all the industries of our land;
that all of his painstaking efforts and those
of the band of devoted patriots who stood
by him to free the Southern slaves had
mainly resulted in hiding from sight the
repulsive chains of enforced servitude I'M
der the outward garb of freedom; that the
old black codes had simply been replaced
1 W bNhPOCu w thc liz"
conditions; that the old system of
African slavery had merely been succeeded
by the heartless and CALLING system
of African peonage; that the sacrifices
made by him-including that of his martyr
dom-had TO a certain extent been made in
vain; that all the sacrifices, the sorrows,
the sufferiugs of this Nation, made in blood,
in tears, and in vast expenditure of time
and treasure, had, in some degree and in n
certain sense, been useless; that the Union,
TO be sure, was saved--but saved to be
measumbly perverted from its grand pur-
pose; that the power which animated re-
bellion, and which was supposed to have
expired IN the : last ditch, with the Lost
Cause, had, with political legerdemain and
jugglery, with violence, been regained; that
the time had actually come for patriots TO
take back seats, while unrepentant rebels
come TO the front; that the Republic still
lived, but only by sufferance, with the hands
of Southern oligarchs about its palpitating
throat-a Republic, not such as he expect
ted, where all men are equal before the law,
and protected in their rights, but where the
rights of certain class are persistently
trampled under foot; that the people of the
Northern, Middle. and Western States,
observing nothing beyond their own
vicinage, so to speak, and, finding that
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