The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1904-08-18
The Indianola Outrage.

We have however made the amende
honorable for this silly business. by
our governmental strenuosity at In
danola Mississippi. Not long since it
was alleged. although not proven. not
withstanding the fact that there was a
United States Marshal to arrest. a
United States grand jury to indict and
a United States petit jury to convict,
that certain people in the town of
Indianola, Mississippi, had conspired
together for the purpose of preventing
an incumbent of a Federal office from
continuing to hold that office. True,
there is a plain statute of the United
States, writ large" on the pages of
| the Revised Statutes. providing punish
| ment for those guilty of that identical
| crime. 1t was. perhaps however,
thought that the alleged crime could
not be proven in a court of justice UNI
| der the ordinary forms of law; that
| the forces OF law, as in the precedent
cited in Boston, were too weak or
not to be altogether "relied upon" by
those in authority. The necessary and
| righteous consequence was that, re-
| curing to the precedent established by
that miracle of wisdom, George of
! Hanover and his cabinet we prompt
| ~ and strenuously deprived the little
| town of Indianola of all mail facilities,
| proceeded to punish for the laW-break-
! ing intent of q few--if indeed such
| intent ever existed-which / frankly
| admit is questioned-all of the town,
men and women, doctors, lawyers,
! merchants, black and white, by cut
ting off their mail facilities; thus, by
a White House decree excommunicat-
ing them from the intelligence of the
| world. Our ancestors, Incompetent
sibly, even after they had had the wis
| dom of the Boston port bill fully ex-
| planned, persisted in their madness and
| folly, refusing to be enlightened, and
still hung on with miraculous fanata7
cism to the belief that only the guilty
| ought to be punished and even the
guilty only after a fair trial. Not SO
with our wiser generation in the In
| dianola case. Again / wonder how we
| managed to prosper as we have pros
pered so Eiraculously in all our his
tory in spite of a folly like this, un-
| confessed even, until a very recent
date; but folly which we have now.
thank God, nobly shaken off.
Free Trade Between the States.
| The next great historical blunder,
in spite of which, strange TO say, we
have. as | cannot too often repeat,
prospered right along in every step of
our history, with now and then a tenn
porary drop-back. was the immolation
| Dy our ancestors OF the nation S in
dustrialism upon the altar of free
trade within the common domain, not
Withstandlng already existing state
J lines furnished convenient place, op-
portunity and temptation to establish
custom -houses-those potent encour-
| ayers of commerce. What we ought
to have fought for during Colonial
! days was high protective tariff to
keep British products out of the
| American market and another high
protective tariff to keep American pro-
ducts out of the British market thus
eEriching both Britain and America.
| Then, after we had accomplished our
| independence. and each State had be-
come a separate sovereignty South
| Carolina ought to have protected her
self against PENNSYLVANIA and New
| England. PENNSYLVANIA ought to have
seen to it that a line of custom houses
prevented the invasion of her sacred
soil by the products of the Jersey man