i 47 ged him from his bed, and made him get on his knees, while, with pistols pointed at his head, they demanded the way he- was going to vote. The house of Demar was broken open; he was struck with a gun, a rope thrown around his neck, and he was choked till he promised to vote the Democratic ticket. A. W. Burwell, the only Republican lawyer in the town of Hazlehurst, was killed because Chairman of the Independent executive committee. The Democrats said openly, “We must carry the election at all hazards, and the only way to do it is to kill the ring leaders.” One of the worst crimes of all was the murder of a well known merchant, a Union man through the war, J. P. Matthews. He had been warned that he would be killed if he voted, and when in the act of depositing his ballot was shot by Wheeler, the Democratic challenger, at a distance of eighteen feet, twenty-five buckshot entering his breast. Meade, the Democratic Chairman, telegraphed the news to other places. Guns were fired, and the band played for an hour. Wheeler was elected City Marshal for his brave act! Of course the county went Democraticby 2,000 majority. The negroes fled to the woods until after the elections. The Vicksburg Herald, (Democratic), says: “ The truth is, they (the Southern people) will not submit to negro leaders. Rather than do it they will kill them.” The Atlanta Constitution (Dern- ocratic) impudently asks, “ What do the organs (Republican) propose to do about it ?” That the Negro vote has been suppressed, nobody denies. In 1876 the B.epublican vote in South Carolina was 91,870. Two “ years later only 213 Republican votes were counted. In 1876 the Republican majority in Louisiana was over 20,000. Two years later the vote disappeared from the election returns. In Georgia, in 1876, there were over 50,000 Republican votes ; two years later there were only about 5,000. In 1872 the Republican vote in Alabama was 90,272 ; in 1878 the Democrats cast 89,571 ajid the Republican not one vote. With a colored voting population of 118,000 against 141,000 for the whites, the State has not sent for years a colored representative to Congress. The Congressional Committee appointed to investigate these frauds urge that each House of Congress must “refuse seats to persons whose election is directly or indirectly due to crime, either of violence or fraud.”
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