citizens. There is a small body of native white persons, who, with heroic courage, are maintaining the principles of justice and equality. ' There , is also a small body of men from the North, who, with equal courage, are endeavoring to save the State from anarchy and degradation. If left to themselves, the negroes would co-operate with these two classes. But arrayed against them all are a majority of the white people, who possess the larger part of the property; who uniformly command leisure, whether, individually, they possess property or not; who look with contempt upon the black race, and with hatred upon the white men who are their political allies; who are habituated to the use of arms in war and in peace; who in former times were accustomed to the exclusive enjoyment of political power, and who now consider themselves degraded by the elevation of the negro to the rank of equality in political affairs. They have secured power by fraud and force, and, if left to themselves, they will by fraud and force retain it. Indeed, the memory of the bloody events of the campaign of 1875, with 1 he knowledge that their opponents can command, on the instant, the presence of organized bodies of armed men at every voting place, will deter the republican party from any general effort to regain the power wrested from them. These disorders exist also in the neighboring States, and the spirit and ideas which give rise to the disorders are even more general. The power of the National G-overnment will be invoked, and honor and duty will alike require its exercise. The nation cannot witness with indffer- ence the dominion of lawlessness and anarchy in a State, with their incident, evils and a knowledge of the inevitable consequences. It owes a duty to the citizens of the United States residing in Mississippi, and this duty it must perform. It has guaranteed to the State of Mississippi a republican form of government, and this guarantee must be made good. The measures necessary and possible in ap exigency are three : 1. Laws may be passed by Congress for the protection of the rights of citizens in the respective States. 2. States in anarchy, or wherein the affairs are controlled by bodies of armed men, should be denied representation in Congress. 3. The constitutional guarantee of a republican form of government to every State will require the United States, if these disorders increase or even continue, and all milder measures shall prove ineffectual, to remand the State to a territorial condition, and through a system of public education and kindred means of improvement change the ideas of the inhabitants and reconstruct the government upon a republican basis. (17.) The evidence shows, further, that the State of Mississippi is at present under the control of political organizations composed largely of armed men whose common purpose is to deprive the negroes of free exercise of their right of suffrage and to establish and maintain the supremacy of the white-line democracy, in violation alike of the constitution of their own State and of the Constitution of the United Spates. The events which the committee were called to investigate by the order of the Senate constitute one of the darkest chapters in American history. Mississippi was a leading State in the war of the rebellion and an early and persistent advocate of those fat al political heresies in which the rebellion had its origin. To her, in as large a degree as to any other State, may be charged justly the direful evils of the war; and when ths war was ended the white inhabitants resisted those measures of equality which were essential to local and general peace and prosnerity. They refused to accept the negro as their equal politically, and for ten years they have seized every fresh opportunity for a fresh denial of his rights. At last they have regained supremacy in the State by acts of violence, fraud, and murder, fraught with more than all the horrors of open war, without its honor, dignity, generosity, or justice. By them the negro is not regarded as a citizen, and whenever he finds a friend and ally in his efforts to advance himself in political Knowledge or intellectual culture, that friend and ally, whether a native of the State or ah immigrant from the North, is treated as a public enemy. The evil consequences of this policy touch and paralyze every branch of industry and the movements, of business in every channel. Mississippi, with its fertile soil, immense natural resources, and favorable commercial position, is in fact more completely excluded from the influence of the civilization and capital of the more wealthy and advanced States of the Union than are the distant coasts of China and Japan. Men who possess capital are anxious to escape from a Sta’e in which freedom of opinion is not tolerated, where active participation in public affairs is punished often with social ostracism, always with business losses, and not, infrequently, as the record shows, with exile and the* abandonment of property through fear of death. Consequently, lands depreciate in value, the rewards of labor become more and more uncertain, taxes more and more burdensome, the evils of general disorder are multiplied and intensified, and by an inevi'able rule of social and public life, the evils themselves, reacting, increase the spirit of disorder. Unless this tendency can be arrested, every successive chapter in the annals of that State will be darker and bloodier than the preceding one. This tendency cannot be arrested by the unaided efforts of the peaceful, patriotic, and law-abiding
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