Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 May 1873 — Untitled [ARTICLE]

the nfcgrocs were driven Into the CourtHouse. The Court-Hotise was fired, and the negroes slaughtered as they left tlie burning building. After resistance had ceased sixtyfive negroes, terribly mutilated, were found dead near the ruins of the Court-House. Thirty, known to have been taken prisoners, arc said to have been shot after the surrender and thrown into the river. Two of the assailants were wounded." Attorney-General 'Williams tcelgraphed back to Mr. Beckwith as follows: “Toil are_lnstructed to make a thorough investigation of the affairs In " Grant Parish, and, if you find that the laws of the United States have been violated, you will spare no pains nor expense to cause the guilty parties to be arrested and punished, and, if military aid is necessary to execute any United States process, you will call on Gen. Emory for that purpose, Who has been instructed to furnish it.”

News from the Modoc seat of war to the tfith states that after three days* hard fighting the stronghold of the Modoes had been captured, and Captain Jack and his band had fled to the hills southeast of the lava bed, the cavalry being in hot pursuit. Five of the Government troops were killed and ten wounded. The Grand JttVy of Woodford County, Illinois, has failed to find an indictment against Mrs. Workman, the Eureka murderess, for the killing of Mrs. Hedges. The vote stood three for and nineteen against a bill. The Dominion Government has abolished the tolts from freights on vessels passing through the Burlington Bay Canal at the head of Lake. Ontario..— - Concerning the new postal law dispateh-of the 19th says:' “ The third section pf the. Postal Appropriation Act of the last session repeals all laws permitting the transmission by mail of any free matter whatever from and after June 30. Under this law, quarterly prepayments of postage will be required on all newspaper exchanges and county newspapers the same as is now and will be then required in the case of all mail subscriptions, namely: five cents per quarter for weekly newspapers, thirty cents per quarter for papers published six times per week, and thirty-five cents per quarter for daily papers. Prepayment per qilatter or per year is to be made either at the office where Mailed or at the office where delivered. In other words, the same rule will be applied to all newspapers, by whomsoever sent or received.” About 700 members of the order of Si. Crispin recently struck in Cincinnati, in consequence of their employers refusing to recognize their order. • .

Details of the peace conference at Camp Verde, April 6, were received on the 20th. The conference resulted in the unconditional submission and surrender of the two worst bands of the Apaches. Peace was brought about through the complete rout of the Apaches, who have for the last twenty years defied the Government. Over 200 warriors have been killed in the last campaign in the fastness of the Apache country, President Grant and party reached St. Louis , on the 18th; The Supreme Lodge of the World, of the Knights of Pythias adjourned on the 20th, to meet at Pittsburg on the 3d of April, 1874. Edward Booth received an ovation at New Orleans on the 19th, upon being released from the parish prison, where he had been inearcerated twenty-four hours by Judge Hawkins for contempt of the Superior District Court iu continuing business and refusing to pay taxes to Governor Kellogg’s collector, Judge Hawkins having issued an injunction restraining Booth from doing further business until his taxes were paid. A procession with a band of music escorted Booth from prison through the priueicipal streets to his place of business; At the corner of Camp and Gravfer streets, Kellogg was hung in effigy to a lamp-post, and the effigy ■was afterward burned. A telegram of the 20th says the impression was gaining ground that the presence of United States troops would be required in every parish of the State to enforce obedience to the Kellogg government. A special of the 20th announces that a large meeting of the property-holders of Ouehita and adjoining parish was held at Monroe on the 19th, which was addressed by Governor McEncry. The meeting resolved to pay no taxes to the Kellogg government.

A dreadful accident occurred on the Stonington & Providence Kailroad on the 19th. While running from Stonington to Boston, a passenger train fell through the bridge at the Richmond switch. Six ears were burned —three passenger and three baggage—and seven passengers were killed outright or burned to death. The engineer and fireman were burned to a crisp at their posts. A special dispatch of the 20th gives the following particulars: “The train left Stonington about thirty-five minutes late, and was running at the rate of forty miles per hour. As it approached the bridge tiie fireman and engine-driver became aware of the existence of the watery gulf before them, but saw the danger too late to prevent the disasteiyor even save tbcir owu lives by-leaping from the engine. The locomotive jumped the gap, about thirty feet wide, and landed ou the other side in a sand bank, plunging into it with such force as to wreck her completely. -Some idea of lier spctd may be ascertained from the fact that a piece of rail was broken up and shot-through the boiler so that it remained like a shaft exposed at both ends. The engineer, Wm. Guild,, w,hen discovered, was between the driving-wheel and engine, there being but just enough of ids body left to identify him. The fireman, George Eldridgc, was crushed to a Jelly. There were about eighty passengers, and the scene can better be imagined than described. As overturned stoves and lamps set fire to the wood-work, cries for assistance rent tire air from the smoking caldron, frantic husbands calling for wives, wives for husbands, sons and daughters. Some escaped through the ear windows, others were pulled out of the water below, while many more were writhing beneath the ruins. One man with his body partly out of the window Could extricate himself no further and was calling wildly, “Oh, save me, 1 am burned to death ! ’ His screams and moans were not heeded, and death put an end to his sufferings. When Mr. Allen met his death he was standing on the front platforin of a car, and as the train struck his loot was caught iu a grappling iron and in this condition he was burned to death.” General Pieltan, the new Captain-General of Cuba, arrived at Havana on the 18th, and was received with due formalities in the presenee of a large concourse. Little enthusiasm was manifested. A Lincoln (Neb.) dispatch of the 21st says reports of the recent storm west of there show that it was one of the most severe ever known.. There had been great loss of life and property. Many persons were frozen to death in their houses. Men perished near Grafton, Harvard and Hastings, on the B. & M. Railway, while trying to feed their stock. The wind unroofed and blew down, houses, and hundreds of cattle and horses smothered by , the snow filling up the bams. Houses were rendered uninhabitable in several cases, and families perished while trying to reach theif neighbors. Mrs- Myra Bradwcll, of Chicago, some time

ago, made application, under the State statute, to the Judges of the Supreme Court of Illinois, for license to practice law, the application being made in due form. Fending the application, she also filed an affidavit setting forth that she had been a citizen ,of Vermont and ht now a citizen of the United States, and that, therefore, she was entitled in the State of-Tlßp-nois to any right granted to any citizen of the former State, under the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. The State Court overruled the claim, and the case was then appealed to the United States Supreme Court, In which a decision lias just been rendered affirming the judgment of the Court below. A terrible fire occurred recently in Republic County, Kansas, by which many houses, stables, horses, cattle, etc., were destroyed. The house of a-Mr. Crane, near Belleville, was burned, and his family, consisting of his wife and four children, took shelter in the residence of a Mr. Bennett. On the following night the storm took the roof off Mr. Bennett’s house, a stone buildlhg, and blew in the gable end, causing it to fall into the cellar, Where the inmates had taken refuge, and Mrs. Bennett was severely injured. In the morning, Mr. Bennett went to procure assistance. When he returned, he found that the floor had fallen in, and his wife and children, together with Mrs. Crane and two of her children, were crushed to death. A call Is issued for a National Convention of producers and consumers of the United States, to be held in New York city on the 6th of May, to promote, by co-operation, the interests of producers and consumers; also, to consider what can be done to reduce the cost of transportation by rail and water between the West and the seaboard. The Senate Committee on Transportation Routes propose to be present in person or by delegates. Of the United States bonds which were the fruits of the Bidwcll-McDonncll forgeries in London, $220,950 have been recovered in New York. This leaves the gang only $30,000 of their plunder for fighting their way through the courts.

The Court of Claims at Washington has rendered judgment against the United States in favor of ex-Benator Alexander Caldwell for $300,869 on a contract for army transportation in Nebraska in 1866. Chief Justice Drake dissented. —____— A recent Washington dispatch says that, owing to the Modoc massacre and the excitement consequent thereupon, the release of Satanta and Big Tree Is not now ordered. The President and the Secretary of the Interior have control of the matter. General Schofield telegraphed to Washington on the 21st that he had every confidence in his troops, and was doing everything possible to make successful the movement against tlie Modoes, who, he believed, were still in the lava beds. A colored messenger in the New York Custom House has been promoted to a $1,200 clerkship. Ho is the first colored man to serve as a clerk in the Custom House in that city. - » A Washington dispatch of the 21st says: “Governor Kellogg informs the Attorney-Gen-eral that matters are quiet in Louisiana, except in four or five parishes, and his request for troops to be sent thither was to prevent a possible outbreak. He denies that he sent commissions to the Fusion officers in Grant Parish, or any other than those first commissioned. "Taxes are being collected rapidly. During the first quarter of the present year the amount collected was $254,000, against $133,000 in the corresponding time of the previous year.” On the 21st, the first vessel of the season passed through the Welland Canal from Lake Erie into Lake Ontario. The gas stokers employed by the Cincinnati Gas Light and Coke Company have struck for an advance of wages from $2.50 to $3.00 per day. The larger portion of the town of Chico, Cal., has been destroyed by fire. An engineer officer recently arrived in Washington "with plans of a Southern coast canal, to connect the Rio Grande with the Atlantic, near Savannah, Ga. They have been submitted to the Government, and will be laid before the convention of Southern Governors, who meet at Atlanta in May to discuss the subject of in-ter-continental transportation. Up to the 22d, 54,489 immigrants had arrived at New York since January 1, agaiust 46,783 during the same time last year. A woman named Craig tried to kindle a fire with kerosene oil at West Liberty, lowa, on the 21st, and was buried the next day. Her husband had his hands badly burned while trying to smother the fire. A special election in Milwaukee on the 22d to fill the vacancies occasioned by the inelegibility of certain candidates, elected at the regular election on the Ist of April, resulted in the election of Harrison Ludington, Republican, for Mayor, over Levi 11. Kellogg, by 1,260 majority, carrying nine out of the twelve wards, Emil Walter, City Attorney, and J. M. Whaling, Alderman of the Seventh Ward, had no opposition. Mr. Kellogg had a majority of 250 over Ludington at the regular election, but was ineligible on account of holding the office of Counsellor. Joseph O’Neal, of Fulton, 111., Las been sentenced to be hanged for a murder committed on an island in the Mississippi River, near that place, some time last fall. On the 22d the first colored graduate of the Law School in the District of Columbia was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of the District. At the recent municipal election in Quincy, 111., the Democrats elected their ticket by a majority of about 800. Mrs. Anne Hennessey, wife of George Hennessey, a respectable shoemaker, in New York City, a few evenings ago, during an insane fit choked her two children, one three years old and'the other five months, and then roasted I the bodies on the stove.

The New York Senate, on the 23d, voted—--17 to 13—to repeal the Usury law. News from thc Modoc seat .of war up to .the_ 23d states the loss of the Modocs In the recent fight at seventeen killed and many wounded. Captain Jack and his band were still in their" lava-bed stronghold, and General Gillem wus trying to cut off their escape and supplies. The City of Newark, N. J., is .Just now busily and rather fcoksily engaged in claiming Capt. Jack, the Modoc murderer, as one of its former citizens. The Newark papers claim that a few years since there dwelt in the Thirteenth Ward a number of half-breeds who gained a living by welldigging, and that one of these had a son named Jack, who was noted as a ruffian and desperado of the worst sort, «ad who went West some years ago. It is asserted by those who knew him that the personal description of the Modpc Jack tallies with him in every particular. The Newark people will not be likely to be disputed in. the claim they lay to the identity of their former fellow-citizen. *<•'"