Year: 1875

at the same time the offices of deputy United
States marshal, United States supervisor of
elections and distributor of government
bacon, was also a candidate for the Legisla-
ture. Fearing that the election would go
against him he went out into the woods one
evening and shot hole through his own hat,
and thereupon rushed to headquarters and
ordered n squad of federal troops to scour
the county in search of Ku Klux, who, he
asserted, had shot at him. He gave to the
troops blank warrants to arrest such demo-
Gratis as should seem to them suspicious
characters and in his sworn testimony on
this matter he remarked that in fact number
of planters left the county for fear of arrest.


1t looks a little as though Governor Ames
had been firing a hole through his own hat.
He calls for United States troops on the
ground that he is not able to maintain the
peace of the State 1t is, unfortunately for
him, an old trick of his, and it looks little
as though he had now tried it once too often,
for the Attorney General is going to find out
whether there is really an insurrection,
and whether the Governor has really made
an effort to preserve the peace if there is
one, before he advises the President to put
federal troops under his orders. We hope
Mr. Pierrepont will make thorough investi-
CATION and we tender him in the HERALD of
this morning the evidence of one Mississip-
plan, who is so little alarmed about the con-
dition of affairs in the so-called insurrection-
airy district, that on Tuesday last, having
occasion to come to New York on business,
he left his wife and children on a plantation
within six miles of Clinton without the least
fear of their suffering violence. If the two
races were actually in hostile array in this
region, as Governor Ames pretends, white
women and children would be very quickly
removed, for the county in which Clinton
lies has very large preponderance of colored
people, and if the whites were attacking
them they would, even though beaten and
dispersed, take care to retaliate. The same
informant reports that when he left Clinton
on Tuesday morning the colored people were
in the fields picking cotton, which is an
essentially peaceful occupation, in which
women and children as well as men engage,
and which has never, so far as we know, been
pursued under the fire of an enemy


Governor Ames has probably overshot his
mark Instead of calling out for federal
troops his duty was to go to the
scene of the riot and take care
that the Sheriff did his duty in
preserving the peace and arresting offenders.
Instead of that we hear that the Sheriff a
colored man, ran away from Clinton as soon
as he heard the first shot fired, and was, two
days after the riot, in jackson, in consulta-
ton with the Governor. Meantime, so in
capable or worthless are the authorities of
the county, with the Governor back of them,
that the duty of policing the disturbed
district seems to have been surrendered by
them to companies of private citizens.


The whole affair shows clearly the vicious
consequences of the policy Of federal inter-
ference in the local police of the States. 1t
demoralizes the local authorities and en-
courages lawlessness; governors, sheriffs and
other peace officers shirk their duty and fling
it upon federal troops, and naturally, in such
state of things, demagogues use their
power to command federal troops, not only
to put down disorders, but to create and pro-
long them.


Governor Ames is not fit to have the con-
troll of federal troops while he is the civil
ruler Of Mississ ppi. He has shown on pre-
vious occasions that he is capable of misus-
ing this power very grossly and dangerously.
While he can command the troops at his
pleasure he controls the negro vote, which
is, by this show of his power misled to be-
ieve him the representative of the will of
the Northern people. If the President re-
fuses to interfere now he will do much to
restore and maintain order in Mississippi,
for he will cripple Ames.