Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1902-01-22
A Victim Of RetribuiIon.

There is something pathetic about the
inglorious climax that has come to the
career of Franklin j. Moses, ono of the
reconstruction Governors Of .Sonti, Caro-
i!na. Once the chief magistrate of a
greet and proud original State of the
Union, thirty years afterward we find
him pitifully pleading to a police magis-
trate in Boston for leniency, but SEN
fenced to four months in penal institu-
tion for q petty swindle. His downward
career has been constant and punotuated
with petty crimes and police entangle-
ments.
We recall the incident not purposely
to exult over the misfortune of one who
was a conspicuous and malfamous factor
in the oppression of the Southern people
after the civil war. Our reference to him
is necessary because he is type. He
was one of that motley and malignant
tribe that took possession, by the grace
of Congress and the power of bayonet.
bearing batallions, of the State govern
ments of the South and organized mis-
rule, plunder and political oppression
into a system such as Christendom had
never known before. and that finally re-
volted the conscience of the American
people.
Moses is an illustration of the retribu-
tion that moves with the certainty and
inexorableness of divine justice.
"The mills of the gods grind slowly,
But they grind exceeding finer'
And he is the latest, if not the last of
all, to come as a mangled, broken, help
less and hopeless grist from the wheels
of that awful m achinery. Scores of his
colleagues in the disgraceful history of
that era of Southern humiliation and
spoliation have preceded him in ruin and
been consigned to the oblivion of the
ages. While their season of ribald
power, luxurious riot and shameless ras-
calities was brief, gorgeous and amazing,
they were finally forced to flee from their
feastings and take refuge in such safety
as the places that had spawned them
would afford. Even there they mostly
found ostracism and suspicion and shrunk
into pauperism, vagabondage and shifty
criminalism. If it were worth the while
we might here recall the names, once
despicably familiar in Southern affairs
of such as have fallen upon such misera-
BILE conclusions.
1t is enough "to point moral and
adorn the tale" to say that nearly al
these fellows met their full measures OF
misery, odium and punishment, not ir
the South, where they had earned their
infamy, but among the people from whom
they sprung and who once thought them
most fit and desirable masters for The
Southern people, upon whom they were
foisted by radicalism and fastened il
power by regiments of troops. 1t is 6
sufficient vindication of their rep udiatior
and banishment by the South that they
could not find welcomes and honors al
home.
There were some of the leaders of that
epoch who were not evil at heart. They
were mistaken, but not malignant. Wher
they realized the true characters and
purposes of their coparceners they pulled
out from the association and many have
since become useful and honored factors
of purer regimes. But Moses remains
the ultimate type and iilustra tion of the
hen who sowed hate and have reapeG
self havoc wherever they went.--Atlanta
Constitution.