Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1884 — THE SHOTGUN POLICY. [ARTICLE]

THE SHOTGUN POLICY.

South Carolina. Colored Hen to Be Intimidated. [Washington special.] Advices from South Carolina indicate that the Bourbons, elated at their successes in overriding an absolute Republican majority of 30,000 in that State at large, are determined to go even further and rob the Republicans of th • Congressional Representative in the Seventh District, which has been conceded to the Republicans. Already Red Shirt clubs have been organized, and at each political meeting minute guns are fired, and every irieans likely to frighten the ignorant colored voters resorted to. The Bourbon orators appeal to their hearers to remember “the good old days of 1876,” and urge them to throw off the last vestige ot negro supremacy. The Seventh, generally called the “black district,” has a Republican majority of 20,000, and extends almost the entire length of the State. Lately’ the Democrats have not contested the district, buthave-allowed thedlepnblicans to elect their nominee without opposition. This year, however, a Democrat has been nominated, and a vigorous effort is to be made to count him in. It is the purpose of the Bourbons to defeat the re-election of Smalls, and no effort to secure this end will be left untried. Republican papers generally have had little to say in regard to the shotgun policy in the South this year, and the Northern reader is led to think that that policy is worn ou t arid will be entirely discarded. It is apparent, however, that in South Carolina “the chivalry” which shoots down colored voters in cold blood is not dead, and "the indications are that the shotgun will again prove a more potent weapon with the Bourbon thin the ballot in the hands of the negro. Colored men niay not be shot for refusing to vote the Democratic ticket, but a volley of musketry fired in the air around the quarters of the colored voters 6n th: night before election, together with the slight-of-hand changes in the location of the ballot-boxes, will undoubtedly secure the desired result in the Seventh District, and the ' colored vote of 50,0<i0 thereby "UeTivefcOine by a white Bourbon vote of 7,009.