Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 December 1883 — The Bloody Shirt. [ARTICLE]

The Bloody Shirt.

The’Richmond (Va. ) State, one of the most prominent Bourbon organs of the South, assails the Republican papers ’of the North and charges that they are wantonly vilifying and traducing that section by their comments upon the "affair” at "Danville, the “affair” at Copiah, and the various other “affairs” which have occurred in South Caroiinaand elsewhere. It declares that they are appealing to prejudice, ignorance, and sectional animosity,' that they are seeking to “arouse again that danger_£>lis_ spirit which should long ago have ceased to exist in this country, and that they, are waving the bloody shirt to arouse sectional hate and promote partisan ends.” If the Richmond State does not want the bloodj- shirt waved, then why does it net join hands with other Bourbon papers in the South and urge its people to remove the necessity of waving it? They have it in their own hands to stop the, waving of the ensanguined banner any time they choose.. All they have 'to do is to demand of their people that persecution, bulldozing and murder shall stop; that every man in the South shall have the right to vote -as he pleases, free from intimidation and peril to life; that the negro, shall have the same right to go to the polls and deposit his vote that a Bourbon has, and that his vote shall bo counted the same; and that Republicans shall have the right to express their opinions, to declare them on the stump, and to carry elections where they, happen to be in the majority. If this were done there would be no waving of the bloody shirt, there would be no cause for unfriendly criticism of Southern political methods, and it is litTe less than folly to suppose that the North will stand idly by and witness such rank political injustice and persecution, and the disfranchisement of thousands of Republicans, without condemning it. Does the Richmond State, in its denunciations of Northern newspapers for waving the bloody shirt, mean to imply that there is anything like political justice or equality in the South? That voters who oppose Bourbonism are allowed a free and unrestricted exercise of the ballot? That a negro has the same political freedom as a white Bourbon ? That in any city, county or district where there is a Republican majority, however overwhelming it may be, that majority can be voted and declared? That when the negro vote cannot be suppressed by violence, it is not counted out by every fraudulent device that ingenuity can suggest ? If so, then the history of events in the South during the last year anti through many previous years stamps the implications as false. The record of the last year, the massacre at Danville, the murder at Copiah, the frauds in the South Carolina Congressional districts, which the National Government is now investigating, the reduction of the vote in representative districts at least 50 per cent, below the average vote in the North, show that there is no intention in the South to depart from the policy which it has pursued for years of deny; ing free suffrage and practically restricting it to Bourbons. Mr. Matthews was shot down like a dog at Copiah for no other reason than that he voted against the Bourbons. The: Coroner declined to hold an inquest The mur- ' dervrgavo himself up and was set freest once. The ent re Bourbon community met and passed resolutions commending his act, and the murderer has announced himself a candidate for Mayor and will be elected upon the sole issue of murder. This is the violent method. The other is the fraud method, arid it was’so gross in South Carolina that the- United States Court Columbia will try the knaves it ho'’ were engaged in it, which the State will probably regard as another wave of the

bloody shirt. Any infraction of National or State election laws that will insure th a success of the Bourbon ticket and suppress Republican majorities is> considered justifiable in the South, and any exposure of such injustice or demand for equal political rights is resented as hostile to the South. • The South, as we have said, has it in its power to bury the bloody shirt out of sight at any time by conce ling to all its people the right to speak and act and vote as they please without iuterferepce, but until that right is as fully and freely , extended as it is in the North the bloody shirt will be waved. The fault lies at the door of the South. So long as a white or black Republican is disfranchised by violence on the one hand, or trickery on the other, it will be waved. So long as men are murdered, persecuted, terrorized, tortured, or driven from their homes for speaking or voting their opinions-, it will be waved. So long as legitimate majorities are suppressed by fraud it will be waved. So long as every election in the South is characterized by brutal outrages and unblushing corruption on the part of Bourbons, it will be waved, and the Richmond State need not®lay the Battering unction to its soul that its complaints or whines are going to stop it.—Chicago Tribune, _ .