begin falling on Monday and continue through the week to such an extent as to make out-door labor unadvisable, each workman would, although serving by the year, lose his week's wages and $1.20 in addition for sixty-five cents' worth of rations. By such means, and by refusing to pay him any of his dues if he quits work before January, and by a system of store orders, the planters manage to keep the blacks at work upon almost the same terms as in the days of slavery.

Thomas T. Fortune, the colored editor and orator, in his testimony before the committee of the United States Senate in April, 1884, said: "The average daily rate of wages of farm labor in the South is nearer fifty than seventy-five cents, out of which the laborer must feed and clothe his family. He seldom pays rent, and seldom sees a cent of currency. IIe is paid in store orders which can not be negotiated, and takes his farm on shares. One of the greatest hardships of the colored farm laborer in the South is the system of store orders and of share labor."

The whites, except in rare instances, will not sell land to Negroes, because a colored man who owns his own farm is no longer a slave.

But otherwise than this nearly every form and attribute of hereditary bondage exists in many parts of the South.

White overseers are in charge now as then; the blacks are forced to work whether or not they are ill or desire a holliday. If they do not "turn out" on time in the morning the overseer rides to their cabins on horseback, bursts in the door, and with club and pistol, drives them out.

Every overseer and every white man carries at least one revolver, and, on the plantations, clubs and other weapons. If a colored man "talks back" or attempts any argument with a white, he is promptly knocked down. If he attempts to defend himself, he is no less promptly shot.

Colored men are not allowed to have arms. If one is caught with weapons he is arrested and thrown into jail, and

in some localities, his back-pay is confiscated by the planter. The freedmen are thus kept completely terrorized and, consequently, under subjugation as absolute as that of lawful serfdom.

The world is familiar with the recent exodus of Negroes from the South. Thousands and thousands of them fled, leaving behind old friends and associations and whatever they could not conveniently carry of their worldly possessions.

Nothing whatever transpires without a reason. There was a reason for the Negro emeute, and it must have been a grave one. The blacks are patient under the wrongs and scourges inflicted by the whites, and however, by pettifogging and throwing dust, the real reason for the exodus may be beclouded, the fact still remains that the blacks had been so harshly and unjustly dealt with that they could no longer remain with their employers and former masters, and therefore fled in fright and confusion among strangers.

In most localities the judicial officers and civil authorities are composed exclusively of white Democrats. The foundation principle of equity with them is, "keep down the niggers." It is, therefore, difficult-generally absolutely impossible for a colored man ever to begin a suit against a white man, and if, as a mock show of fairness, he is allowed to proceed, his defeat is inevitable.

Having no arms, no mode of defense, no courts, no property, no laws save those turned against him, no source of pardon from unjast and illegal punishments, no throne before which to petition for redress of material grievances and no friends but those luke-warm and inactive by reason of distance and for want of proper information, the lot of the freedman, aside from the political indignities heaped upon him, is not much less than a long draught of gall and wormwood.

This kind of oppression is far more serious in its results than the deprivation of social privileges or civil rights.

Nothing so circumscribes a man's life as physical want, nothing so prostrates a nation as compulsory poverty. To withhold rightful privileges may be a temporary humiliation, but to enforce changeless want entails a life-time of groveling and dwarfs the soul as well as the body.

The blacks are ambitious, and would, if they could be once rescued from the pillory, start on a creditable upward Their thralldom is not owing to a want of intelligence or honorable ambition, but to circumstances.

course.

Generations of degradation, in which ignorance was "bred in and in" with ignorance, the heart hardened by tyrannous brutality and the soul withered by the galling chains of utter hopelessness and helplessness, were suddenly succeeded by a technical freedom that only rendered the masters still more determined in the methods necessary to retain supremacy.

Therefore, not equipped for freedom and independence, without the feeblest means of coping with their former masters, the change in law brought little or no change of conditions in fact to the blacks. The transition was simply from lawful to unlawful bondage. At first they were like persons born in a prison-strangers to the sweets of liberty; and in that condition, as far as could be done by robbery, tyranny and brutality, have they been kept since 1863. Gradually they learn the meaning of freedom; slowly the germ of ambition unfolds itself in their dwarfed natures; steadily the light of intelligence grows whiter and brighter in their souls; yet around a large portion of the poor creatures the master has built a Chinese wall which they are unable to scale without help from the outside.

At the interview

Shall that succor ever be extended? between the colored citizens and the members of the United States Senate in 1873, in Louisiana, Mr. Ingraham declared, while pleading for his race:

There have been over 5,000 men murdered in this State since 1865 for no other cause on God's green earth than their

attachment to the Republican party. They have been hunted through field and flood and shot down for no other reason.

Undoubtedly the government has no clear authority to step in and guard each individual Republican from the knives and bullets of the Democrats. The disgrace is that such authority has not been created; for it is a principle as old as it is just, that no person owes allegiance to a government that is either unable or unwilling to protect him-at least in performing the duties which his allegiance and citizenship imply.

If the apathy of the Republican North shall continue, the future of 4,000,000 blacks in the South will be without light or hope. And when summoned with the nations of the earth before the bar of God, we shall be held responsible for the consequences of our dereliction toward the black race.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

SOUTHERN ELECTION METHODS-FRAUD, CRIME AND

BLOOD.

The Just Fate of Rebels-What the North asked-What She Received -No Cessation of Hostilities--The Ku Klux Klan-It Consisted of 550,000 oath-bound Assassins-Its Doings in Tennessee-Its Texas Butcheries too Numerous to Be Kept in Account-Its Operations in Louisiana, the Carolinas and Alabama--Northern Teachers Driven Away--Election Diabolism in Louisiana-Frightful Massacre in 1866-Gen. P. H. Sheridan's Startling Report in 1875--Forty-two Hundred Fifty-six Killed and Wounded Republicans--Judge Woods States a Case-Grant Describes the Coushatta Murders-A List of the Slain By Parishes--An Appalling Record --The Double-barreled Ballot-box--How It Is Managed--A Bloodsaving Invention--The Carolinas-Fac Simile of Tissue BallotsMr. Miller Explains Their Use-Mississippi-The Chisolm Massacre-Villainies of the "Shoe-string District"-Dishonesty of the Court The Killing of J. P. Matthews-A Cold-blooded and Shocking Murder-Testimony at the Investigation-The "Tailhold Club"-Its Duties-Wheeler Rewarded-Acquitted by Blasphemous Jurors-Assassination of Young Real-Mrs. Chisolm's Bitter Rebuke of the Party.

The Rebellion was the greatest crime of modern times. Responsibility for it and the consequences of it existed somewhere. If in individuals, they deserved the gibbet; if in the South as a belligerent nation, the federal government acquired the rights of a conqueror and might have saddled the expenses of the conflict upon the rebels and kept them in subjugation for its payment and for their good behavior. That, according to the law of nations, was what they deserved; that, had Prussia been dealing with them, is what they would have suffered.