Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 November 1883 — SOUTHERN. [ARTICLE]

SOUTHERN.

The first bale of cotton ever picked by machinery, is on exhibition at Charleston, aC. It is declared equal to the hand-picked staple. In a fight between negro thieves and a posse of three law-and-order citizens, near Toomsboro, Go., three of the former and one of the latter were slain. / Hon. Armistead Bart, one of the oldest and ablest lawyers in South Carolina, died suddenly In his office at Abbeville. He was a member of Congress from 1843 to 1863. A fire at Savannah, Ga., which had its origin in the large cotton warehouse of Garnett, Stubbs & Co., destroyed the warehouse, containing 3,000 bales of cotton, and 1,3«0 houses, covering an area of a half mile square, causing a loss of at least five lives, and probably eight or ten. The loss is placed at nearly $1,000,000, and the insurance at not half that amount. Unknown assassins fired a volley of bullets through a circus tent at New Edinburg, Ark., killing a contortionist in the ring. Kate Townsend, a notorious woman of New Orleans, La., was stabbed to death by Treville Sykes, who had been his victim’s putative husband for twenty years. The tragedy occurred in an elegant mansion owned by the woman. She was worth $200,000. Sykes is in jail. The woman was ten times out with a huge bowie-knife, each of six of the wounds being fatal in its character. Three squares of wooden buildings in Algiers, La., were burned, the loss being $9,000. The warehouse of R. B. Hutchcraft, at Paris, Ky., valued, with Its contents, at $50,000, was wiped out by fire. A street fight occurred at Danville, Va., between blacks and whites, in which five of the former were killed and two white men wounded, one mortally, The beginning of the conflict was the beating by one ot the citizens of a negro who abused another negro for apologizing for an apparent rudeness, and spoke roughly about the citizen. Some of both colors interfered, and a pistol was knocked out of the hands of one white man and exploded. Just then the report reached an assembly of white citizens, in session about political matters, that a conflict was going on In the street. They came out In a body, and both classes formed in separate crowds. Some of each crowd were armed. A number of negroes approaching the white crowd called out, “Shoot, you, we had as soon settle this thing now as any other time.” Just then somebody in the white crowd called out “fire I” and the firing began. The negroes returned the fire and ran off, some firing as they ran. All the stores were closed immediately, and the alarm bell was sounded and the people came out with arms. The Town Sergeant came out soon after with one of the military companies and commanded the people in the name of the Commonwealth to go home, and the streets were soon cleared.