46 SOUTHERN ELECTION FRAUDS. , Shall the Democratic party come into power through Southern outrages on defenceless colored people? The census of 1880 showed 6,632,000 colored in the former slave States. These, freed by the Republican party, are naturally Republicans. When the rebel States were taken back into the Union, they accepted the new amendments by which the right to vote at any election should not in any way be abridged. By the conferring of suffrage on the slaves, the South has gained thirty representatives in Congress, and an equal number of votes in the Electoral College. In the days of slavery, five slaves were counted as three white persons; now they are counted as five. Has the South kept her pledge? No. Instead of allowing the negro to vote as he chooses, he is often intimidated, whipped, or murdered, if he does not vote the Democratic ticket, or does not refrain from voting. In this way, by usurpation, the Democrats have once obtained a majority in the Senate, and four times in the House of Representatives. The acts of the Klu Klux Klan filled the heart of every Northener with horror and indignation. “But,” says some peace-loving citizen, “these things happened several years ago. Things are different now.” Are they? Read the new book by General Green B. Raum, on the “Existing Conflict,” and see if American history furnishes a blacker page. Read the Senate report of last May, made by Messrs. Hoar, Sherman, Frye, and others, on the outrages in one small county, Copiah, Mississippi. The county had been Republican since the readmission of the State, till 1875. Then the Democrats carried it by the shot-gun policy. In 1883, the Republicans made no nomination, but all in opposition to Democrats called themselves Independents. At once the Democrats armed themselves in companies of a hundred or more and marched through the streets at night, firing guns and cannon to intimidate the negroes. Tom Wallis, a colored Re- .publican, was taken from his bed, a rope thrown around his neck, and shot with balls from five guns. An old man named Handy Fortner was terribly lacerated with a rope and strap, and told “if he voted the Republican ticket they would blow his brains out.” Frank Hayes and his wife were both shot in their own homes and badly wounded. The Democratic “procession” broke in the door of Wallace Gilmore, an old colored man, drag
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