Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 May 1890 — FORCE AT THE POLLS. [ARTICLE]

FORCE AT THE POLLS.

What the Passage of tho Rowell Election BUI Means to the Southern States. [Washington special.] A number of gentlemen who have emerged from ambush since the incoming of the Harrison administration met last week and discussed the necessity of having United States troops at the polls. “Do you know what the Rowell election bill means in the Sonth?” asked a distinguished representative from that section. It meins this: Ivnorant and vicious negroes will be appointed to hold, elections, count votes, and canvass them, and they will be aided at the polls with other ignorant and brutal negroes armed with the protection of the law as deputy United States marshals. These will virtually hold the polls and obstruct voting, and will you wonder if serious emeutes shall occur under such circumstances? When Mr. Reed said at Pittsburg substantially that he had now enlisted under the bloody shirt he meant to convey to the country the idea that force was necessary to control elections in tho

South. He looks for bloodshed at the fall elections if these election laws should be passed, and proposes to make them the issue of the campaign in 1892. We all supposed that when Haves withdrew the bayonets from the halls of the State Legislatures that phase of reconstruction was over for all time, and the South took a new atep forward in moral and material progress. The aim of the conspirators now is to reintroduce the army as a feature of elections, and to ke?p‘the South stirred up to furnish themes for ’the stump in the North. I should regard the successful carrying out of this programme as a great blow to Southern industries, and it would injure the North in a corresponding degree, for what hurts one section is bound to injure every other in some degree. Do I think the Federal election bills will pass? Yes. But I have hopes that the Democrats will carry the next House in spite of them, and that will upset the execution of the Republican -programme for 1892. ”