USA > Mississippi > A history of Mississippi : from the discovery of the great river > Part 35
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The North is reluctant to trust the settlement of the Southern question to the Democratic party, and the Southern conserva- tives are unwilling to trust the South-hating party, led by such
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men as Morton, of Indiana. Both are willing to trust it to the Liberal Republicans. It does seem to me that the task has legit- imately devolved upon them; and no more tempting field was ever offered to liberal, patriotic ambition. To reconcile and nationalize the South, to lead it out of the cul de sac of sectional- ism into the broad stream of national life, to give it a consti- tutional footing in the Union, to restore peace, good will and confidence between the members of this great family of States, will lay the solid and durable foundation of a party which will surely win and long retain the hearts of the American people. This combination will give us an impartial administration. We want no more, for that will be followed by a better government here.
For one, I long to see a government at Washington, and a gov- ernment here, toward which I can feel a genuine sentiment of reverence and respect. It is a dreary life we lead here, with a national government ever suspicious and ever frowning, imperi- ous and hostile, and a home government feeble, furtive, false and fraudulent. Under. such influences the feeling of patriotism must die out amongst us, and this will accomplish the ruin of a noble population. You might as well destroy the sentiment of religion as the sentiment of patriotism, for human character is a deformity if either be wanting. There can be no objection to this overture on our part. We are as near to the Liberal Repub- licans as we are to Governor Tilden and the New York Democ- racy, so far as I can see, unless we put into the estimate the fact that one was anti-slavery before the war, and the other was not, and one favored the reconstruction laws, and the other opposed them. They both preferred war to the destruction of the Union. But we would be blind to make any such distinc. tion. We are in a new world. We are moving on a new plane. It is better that we hang a mill-stone about our necks than cling to these old issues. To cling to them is to perpetuate sectional seclusion. Of all things it will not do to fall into a hypocon- driacal condition in politics. I pity the man who in a great cri- sis says to himself: "I can't go there, because there is the old Whig line, nor there because that is the Republican line, nor there bect use I will be compelled to cross the Democratic Ilne." It sometimes happens that a man gets himself into such a condi- tion of mental delusion that old party lines or names are to him like running water to a witch. Under some mysterious law or eccentric antipathy he can't cross them. It matters not where duty commands him to go, or on what mission of patriotism he may be proceeding, if he chances to find one of these lines in his path, he is brought to a dead halt, and must needs turn and retrace his steps.
At this juncture and crisis of our affairs, from sentimental politics, from unreasoning antipathies, and from all uncharitable- ness, may the Lord deliver us. Party fidelity is, in the proper sense and at the proper time, a manly virtue ; but there are times
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when it must give place to the paramount considerations of duty. I do not deride party traditions. I cherish them myself. What I mean is that we can't make National anthems out of them. "The harp is hushed, the minstrel gone."
Neither the conservative people of the South, nor the National Democracy, nor the Liberal Republicans, propose, separately or in combination, to make any issue with our newly created fellow- citizens about their personal, individual rights, civil or political. They, in common with Mr. Morton, and the South-hating wing of the Republican party, may have doubted the wisdom of the measure which endowed them with the ballot, but the question stands before us now in a very different light. They, (the colored people) pined for freedom, but did not seek the ballot. It was thrust upon them. They have enjoyed it, or used it for seven years. They are a tractable, and, unless misguided, harm- loss people. It would be a hard measure to take from them the ballot. Really it rests altogether with them and the American people how long they will keep it. We can't deprive them of it. But the American people do make the issue with them, which they make with any class of men who use the ballot to degrade the institutions and destroy the property of the country.
Yesterday my eye fell upon this very significant passage in the "Nation," a Republican, but non-partisan journal of the very high- est rank, and noted for the judicial fairness of its treatment of political and all other questions :
"You must excuse us, but we have got over the idea we once had, that when you hear that a man is free, you need ask no more about him. We have been taught by bitter experience that it is also necessary to ask what use he has made of his freedom?" This ominous question will sooner or later, if matters continue to go on here as they do now, be asked by the American people of our newly made fellow-citizens. Here they have an immense majority; they have majorities in four or five Southern States. It so happens that the States have languished and lagged in the race, just in proportion to the number of colored voters in each. This is an ominous fact. It refutes the public falsehood which has been resorted to by the few remaining Radical coteries in the South, that the whites, if in power, would take away freedom of the ballot, or otherwise oppress the colored people. Have they in Virginia, in Tennessee, in Georgia and other States where the whites control the government, attempted to oppose the colored voter? I assure you that the fact has become known at last to the American people, that the only oppression in the South, is the oppression of the whites by colored majorities led by Radicals. To my mind it has now become clear as the noon-day sun that the only intimidation here is the intimidation by a few hundred Radical adventurers of the whole population. With un- paralleled audacity they threaten the whites with the Federal bayonet, and assuming that they alone can secure Federal aid, they threaten the colored people that they will desert them and
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take from them this protection, so that they will be turned over to the white people, who, as they falsely assert, will reduce them to a condition as bad as it was before emancipation. During last summer the colored people in Vicksburg undertook to assert their political independence. They nominated their own men for the offices of the city. It gave great offense to the carpet- baggers. The nominations were bad; not exceptionally so as Radical nominations, but they lacked the usual proportion of carpet-baggers.
The nominations by the Democrats were good. The Radicals- the carpet-baggers-stood aloof. They throw cold water on the movement of the colored men. A prominent Radical told me the colored men's movement ought to be defeated. It was defeated, as it should have been. When the news reached the city, (I make the statement from report and therefore give no name), a prominent Radical said, rubbing his hands, "I am glad of it. This will teach the colored people that they can't do without the carpet-baggers." This sheds a flood of light on the relations of the partners who captured Mississippi. I repeat, therefore, that the American people are watching the result of a doubtful ex- periment. Even now they ask of the newly enfranchised, what use have you made of freedom and the ballot so generously be- stowed? To whom and to what have you dedicated them ? Do you wield the weapon, more powerful in the hands of free and independent voters than an "army with banners," for your coun- try's good, or have you ignorantly surrendered it slavishly to the dictation of a few hundred selfish and incompetent men ? If you have used it wisely, show us the State in which you control, where there is the least sign of prosperity, or the faintest glim- mer of the light of honest or intelligent government. We are guardians of all the country-of its honor and its interests. We cannot allow you or any class of citizens to bring disgrace on republican institutions, or ruin on any part of this, our great inheritance. What answer can be made for them? It is noto- rious that they have patiently submitted to a political servitude, which in its absolute subjection has no parallel. The mass of them don't vote, but are literally voted. They are ridden and driven by a little nest of men who are alien to the State in feel- ing. I say in feeling because they habitually traduce the State when they go abroad. What has been the result? We have governments feeble and corrupt, presenting a strange anomaly pregnant with insignificance. A representative government ren- dered entirely irresponsible by the operation of the ballot and the representative principle in it. The voters don't control their rulers. The rulers drive the voters. The result is a govern- ment at once imperious and contemptible, a tyranny at once loathsome and deadly.
But say our Radical rulers : "Look at the government of Mis- sissippi and see if there be not this glimmer there." I confess I don't see it. I have no great experience of government, but I
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have never conceived that anything like it was possible in a re- public. Colonel Lamar, whose word goes a long way, said the other day in his speech, that it was the worst government on the face of the earth. The statesmanship of it has reached no higher than the levying of taxes, the issue of State warrants, and the funding thereof. This might be borne, but the taxation is ruin- ous, while the credit of the State is sinking under corrupt and wasteful expenditure. The people murmur and the world scoffs at it. True, Governor Ames is pleased to say that these murmurs are a disgusting sham. "I pay more taxes than these howling tax-payers." When I read that part of his testimony in the Vicksburg case, I was reminded of a passage in the book of Job. Job had been stripped of his wealth, and of his children, and afflicted in many ways; and he cried out in his agony. His com- forters said to him : "You are a howler;" and Job replied, "Does the wild ass bray when he hath grass? or loweth the ox over his fodder ?" The office-holders and fee and salary men don't howl ; they have both grass and fodder.
One more subject I will touch before concluding, and that is, the charge brought against us of unfriendliness to people simply as Northern people, our disposition to ostracise them socially, and to persecute them in every way. This is called disloyalty. There is a class of people in the United States who have made the art of manufacturing and spreading falsehoods, and public falsehoods at that, take rank amongst the great industries of this busy people. A distinguished man to whom I made this remark, said : "Yes, and you may say that there is a prodigious and highly cultivated talent for believing falsehoods, which nourishes the industry."
On this matter of social ostracism, I have this to say : If any two hundred Southern men, backed by a Federal administra- tion, should go to Indianapolis, turn out the Indiana people, take possession of all the seats of power, honor and profit, denounce the people at large as assassins and barbarians, introduce corrup- tion in all branches of the public administration, make govern- ment a curse instead of a blessing, league with the most ignorant class of society, to make war on the enlightened, intelligent and virtuous, what kind of social relations would such a state of things beget between Mr. Morton and his fellow-citizens and the intruders ? When these people first flocked into the State, they thought, or assumed, that they represented the majesty of an offended nation, and like the order of men to which they belong, expected to act the part of public patrons, to be surrounded by clients, and to pass amongst us, amid salams and genuflections ; but they were instantly undeceived.
We have ever since the war prayed earnestly that the true representatives of the Northern people might come among us -- their mechanics, their farmers, their professional men, the repre- sentatives of their industries. We got only the " chevalier d' industrie", and we know him at sight. A gentleman, a Republi- can, visiting the South last winter to satisfy himself on this and
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other points, said : "When I saw the great 'ostracised' and re- flected upon what they had done here, I said to myself, these men would be ostracised anywhere." They have diligently labored to create the belief that Northern men cannot live here without humiliation, and without danger of violence. Now the class of men we want, they don't want. That is clear. Their Commis- sioner of Immigration has, for agricultural and " other pur- poses," introduced three thousand colored men into the State, and not a single white man, unless it be some vagabond who wanted a free passage. They say to the Northern men, "Be- ware of man-traps and spring guns." To the negro-come on, there is no danger. Truly there is none. Does it not stand to reason that if we can tolerate the class of Northern men we have here as rulers, we can tolerate the Northern farmers or mechanics, or professional men as neighbors ?
All this wretched and contemptible drivel passes now for noth- ing with the real men of the North. The Radical coterie here but poorly represents the Northern people. They miserably miscon- ceive them. The plain truth of the matter is, these men wish to disguise what it is that carries men to Virginia, Georgia. Tennes- see and the arid plains of Colorado, and prevents them from com- ing to this fruitful land. It is just this. No sane man being well out of Mississippi with his wife, children and property, would trust them to the tender mercies of such a government as we have here. It is pretended that a narrative of the lives of these so- called persecuted men, if put into a book, would shelve Fox's book of martyrs. Now let me ask if the most pronounced car- pet-baggers and South-haters here, look like persecuted men? They grow so rapidly in sleekness and fatness that I have to be introduced to them over and over again, they do so improve out my acquaintance Minds at ease and consciences at rest is writ- ten in their "placid" countenances. Yet they cry out like St. Paul, "verily I die daily." Good-natured fellows they are, too, in their way. There is an old adage which says that, " a man is good after being fed."
I assure these men that their last card has been played, and it has not won. This trumpery no longer deceives anybody, and it matters not which party prevails in 1876, no National adminis- tration will again incur the odium of propping them up. When the sap no longer flows into the stem they will drop from it. They will die of inanition-of atrophy.
This tyranny and oppression widened the breach be- tween Ames and the property holders of the State. In their opposition to his usurpations they alleged that he was not even a qualified elector, and, applying the consti- tutional test, was at most a de facto officer. True, he was at one time marked as a registered voter in Adams county. but on a revision of the registration his name was stricken
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from the books as a non-resident. The canvass of 1875 was inaugurated with a fixed determination to no longer submit to the disgrace of being ruled by aliens, negroes and wreckers. Old men left their homes and were found in the thickest of the fight, and not infrequently upon the hustings, encouraging young men to battle for consti- tutional liberty. Clubs were formed and almost daily re- inforced. Ames made frequent application to the Presi- dent of the United States for troops to suppress alleged violence in various parts of the commonwealth.
Gen. George, the chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee, wired the Attorney-General of the United States, that there were no disturbances in Mississippi, and no obstructions to the execution of the laws. President Grant refused to interfere, assigning as a reason that the country was tired out with these annual autumnal out- breaks in the South. The Washington authorities, of course, were fully advised of the mal-administration, ignor- ance and corruption on the part of the Radical office- holders in Mississippi. Ames's continued applications for United States troops to assist him in his warfare, induced Judge Pierrepont, the Attorney-General of the United States, to send C. K. Chase, Esq., a gentleman of intelli- gence and good address, to Mississippi to learn and report to him the true status of affairs. Prior to this time, on Saturday, the 4th day of September, 1875, the Clinton riot occurred. It had been extensively published that there would be a Radical mass meeting and barbecue at Clinton on that day, to which all, irrespective of party, were in- vited.
Judge Amos R. Johnston, a distinguished and widely known lawyer, was the Democratic candidate for State Senator for the counties of Hinds and Rankin. He attended the Clinton meeting and had concluded his speech, and was being replied to by H. T. Fisher, a Republican, when the fight began. There are two versions of the origin of the trouble, but both concur that the fight was precipitated by the negroes. The first shot fired was followed by vol- ley after volley, when the few whites charged the negroes who broke in a disorderly retreat. The whites soon real-
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ized that their pistols were emptied, and their ammunition exhausted, that they numbered only twenty-five, and the negroes two thousand, they ceased pursuit and moved in the direction of the town. When this was observed by the negroes the cry went up, "Kill the white men, they are running," a call was made for Republicans to charge, to which more than three hundred responded. The whites who were making their way to the town were re-enforced by citizens of the place, when the negroes ceased pursuit. Young Mr. Thompson and Mr. Sively, of Raymond, became separated from their comrades, made their way into an open field probably a mile and a half from the speaker's stand, where they were overtaken by the negroes and bru- tally murdered. Mr. Charles Chilton, a peaceable citizen of the town of Clinton, was killed in his own yard by the infuriated negroes. Telegrams were sent from Clinton to Vicksburg, Jackson, Edwards and other places for re-in- forcements. In response to which companies from the sev- eral places were soon on the ground. The negroes of the vicinity who had had no connection with the riot received protection from the whites and remained at their homes. This trouble was followed by the congregating of a great number of negroes from the country about the Governor's Mansion, and it was understood were seeking arms with which to fight. The white people were determined to pro- tect themselves but if possible to avoid a race conflict. The sheriff of Hinds county, one Harney, a negro, knowing the temper of the white people, sought an interview with Cap- tain Frank Johnston who commanded the Jackson com- pany which re-inforced Clinton. Captain Johnston was known to be a lawyer of distinction, prudent, conservative and fair-minded, and through him sheriff Harney made known his desire for a conference of leading men of the two races ; this well-timed request was accepted and re- sulted in an agreement for terms of peace, which, on Cap- tain Johnston's return to Clinton, was heartily approved by the people.
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What was termed the Yazoo riot occurred about the same time, and was caused by an intemperate and inflammatory harangue of A. T. Morgan, a white man, sheriff of the
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county, who had married a negress. During the Yazoo trouble some few persons lost their lives, while Morgan brought his case to Ames and invoked his interference. Ames desired to re-install Morgan, even if it required the invasion of the county with negro militia. As an experi- ment Ames dispatched Chas. Caldwell's company of negro militia out towards Clinton and Edwards, and it was thought with a view of invading Yazoo county. Not- withstanding this insult and menace, the white people were counseled to observe peace, but it was an open secret that they were prepared to protect themselves, and even at this late day it is not improper to say that if negro troops had invaded Yazoo county, it would have been purely accidental if a single man had been left to bear the tale to his tyrant master. All of these occurrences were made known to Mr. Chase, the accredited representa- tive of the Department of Justice, who had frequent and prolonged conferences with the leaders of the contending parties. During Mr. Chase's stay at the Capital, a ineet- ing was arranged for the 20th of October, between a com- mittee of citizens and the Governor, in the interest of peace and order. The committee consisted of J. Z. George, Frank Johnston, Joshua Green, W. L. Nugent, T. J. Wharton, John W. Robinson, H. Hilzheim, E. Richardson, R. L. Saunders, J. C. Rietti, David Shelton and Robert Lowry. The meeting was held in the parlor of the Gov- ernor's Mansion. Terms were reached and mutual pledges given. After the conference with the Governor a cit- izens' meeting was held at Angelo's Hall, with Profes- sor Rice, of Clinton, in the chair. The result of the conference with the Governor was made known, which was that the militia was to be disbanded, and the arms in their possession placed in the custody of United States troops. That the Governor had countermanded the order for the shipment of arms to De Soto county, and that no militia would be ordered to Yazoo. The committee pledged that peace and order would be observed and maintained. From that date the Radical ranks were broken, the leaders on the run, and a Democratic victory almost achieved. Barbecues, basket-dinners, etc., were the order of the day.
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Hundreds and thousands of negroes had united with the army of whites. On the day of election the Democrats presented an impregnable column of determined men, and won a victory, the importance of which was incalculable. After the smoke of battle had cleared away, the better opinion prevailed that Lieut .- Governor A. K. Davis, and T. W. Cardoza, State Superintendent of Public Education, both colored men, would be impeached.
Less than one week after the election, a Democratic meeting, held in one of the counties of the State, passed the following resolution:
"Resolved, That we desire that Governor Ames will persevere in the measures of retrenchment and reform, heretofore recommended by him and calculated to lighten the burdens of the people; and we hereby respectfully request our Representatives in both branches of the Legislature to give to him their confidence and support in all matters of State policy designed to advance the true and permanent interest of the State; and, furthermore, and as the sense of this meeting, it is right that the past be forgotten, and that the Chief Executive of the State, the Legislature, and all others of the State, act henceforth in union and harmony and with an eye single to the pub- lic good."
Resolved, That the Clarion be requested to copy the above.
That gifted and experienced journalist, patriot and sturdy statesman, Major E. Barksdale, then editor-in-chief of the Clarion, indulged in the following comments on the reso- lution quoted :
"We will not be understood as expressing any opinion calculated to forestall the action of the people's represen- tatives in arraigning Governor Ames for his numerous, repeated and flagrant violations of the Constitution, to the great detriment of the State. The Legislature cannot pass over without impartial and fearless inquiry his violations of the Constitution. This is no occasion for sentimentalisni nor time-serving expediency. It is for the representatives of the people, to whom the whole subject has been remit- ted, to decide. We will abide their verdict but will not consent to forestall it."
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This was the first published utterance that looked for- ward to the impeachment of Governor Ames, the propriety and expediency of which was questioned by many promi- nent citizens, among whom were a number of able and distinguished lawyers. But the accomplished author of the suggestion followed it up, supporting his position with unanswerable arguments. The view was assuming shape that he would be impeached. The charges previously made by the distinguished editor of the Clarion, supported by additional reasons, were given publicity through the columns of that journal, which insisted that he had "for- feited his claims to the office whose functions he had abused, and not to dislodge him from the office is to admit that the charges repeatedly made against him are false. It is an affront to common sense to say that offenses with which he is charged are not impeachable."
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