Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-02-10
ALLEGED ELECTION ouTRAGEs.
Report Of the Senate Committee on the So
Called Washington County 0Utrages
Cnrresnondence of the Gazette.

Report Of the Senate Committee on the So
Called Washington County Outrages.
Correspondence of the Gazette.
WASHINGTON, Feb. G.-The special
senate committee to investigate the al
legged election outrages in Washington
county, Tex, submitted its report to-
day The first conclusion they reach is
that the averments of the petitioners as
to their situation in their homes in Texas
are III substance and effect sustained by
the evidence. As TO the suppression of
the vote at the Chapel HIN districts, the
committee thinks 1t is chargeable
10 the leaders of the opposition
ticket, ana in that interest, with the
motive to discourage and suppress the
Republican vote here, and the colored
Republican voters heing unwilling TO eX-
pose themselves to the fate which was
visited upon the colored judges of cleo
ton at Chapel Hin in 1884 AT the Flew
elIyn poll, Devices Bolton, who headed a
raidlng party that entered the polling
precinct in disguise for the purpose of
DESTROYING the ballot-boX, was shot and
killed The report says;
All in the room fed at once in dis
may and the dead man was left alone,
uncared for, as he lay, all night the
lamp burning brightly. Towards mOru-
ing, Presiding Judge Robinson persuaded
an aged colored man, his neighbor, Al
fred Jones, TO leave the sick-bed of his
wife and so with him to the scene Of the
homicide, on the plea that he was afraid
TO go alone. This man had no knowledge
Of the bloody occurrence until informed
of il by Robinson, but their
visit TO the dead body, which
had been untouched, the inspection
of the corpus deficit and observation of
the scene of the transaction, cost him his
life. This made him witness of the dis
guise and the murderous weapon of Boil
ton and the manner of his fall. When
afterwards an attempt was TO be made to
make out Bolton an unarmed and undis-
gused and innocent and peaceful visitor
To the polling place and slain by unpro-
voked violence, the colored man Alfred
was arrested, put IN Jail aud hung up, on
no conceivable incentive but to make
away with his testimony -
AS to the murder of the two Jones men
and Fielder by Il mob who took them out
of Jail at Brennan and hanged them, the
committee says, after reviewing the tes-
timony:
'sThese murders were each committed
upon the motive and in the interest of the
policy and purpose that had countenanced
and caused the s'raids'' on the ballot
boxes at that election The sacrifice Of
these worthy and blameless lives was de-
handed for the suppression of their evil
denee, which would have demonstrated
the death Of Bolton, as Detailing him in
the act of preeoncerted attack
upon the ballot box at Flewellyn IS, TO
defeat the election of the Republican
ticket. The committee cannot find any
escape from this conclusion upon the
whole body and weight of the testimony
The evidence before the committee
showed that no attempts were made by
the authorities of the county of Wash
ington or the state of Texas TO bring TO
indictment, trial or punishment any of
the actors in the several raids on the
ballot boxes at the election of 1886.
No such an attempt had been made in re-
spect of the outrage on the ballot boxes
and the shooting of the coloTed judges of
election at Chapel Hill in the election of
1884 The wrath of this community was
ali excited and was all visited upon the
white aud colored Republicans. who had