Tuesday, December 24, 2013

"The law guards no man; his own guard are his revolver and bowie..."

[WARNING: The following contains severe racist commentary, as well as vivid details of one of the worst atrocities committed on Americans soil.]
LOUISIANA.

Important Testimony Concerning the
Colfax Massacre.

Special Correspondence Cincinnati Times
and Chronicle.

New Orleans. La., April 28.

   I had an interview to-day with a gentleman from Rapides Parish, which adjoins Grant. He is a man of wealth and high social position, and well known throughout the State, and possessing great influence. Every word he says can be relied upon, and his statements are entitled to additional weight, when he speaks favorably for the Republicans of Colfax, from the fact that he is

AN OLD SLAVEHOLDER, SECESSIONIST,
AND A STRONG DEMOCRAT TO-DAY.

He desires his name to be withheld for the present, as he will soon be re-required to give testimony in the investigation which is to ensue. His description of the condition of affairs upon the Red River should be heard to be appreciated. I can give but a faint idea of what he so graphically described.

   Said he: "The Republican officers on that side of the river are either rascals or cowards. They refuse, either because they dare not, or, more often, because they will not, to execute warrants or serve writs. To my knowledge there are over fifty warrants in the hands of the officers of Rapides Pariah which they refuse to execute. Some of them are two years old. Any man can commit any crime with impunity. The law guards no man; his own guard are his revolver and bowie. We have been twenty months without a court of any kind. The Judges, Sheriffs, &c., appointed by the Republicans, are all of a piece. They refuse to bring an offender of any kind to trial. These are the appointees of Pinchback and Kellogg. Let them turn out these rascals, and send us men, black or white. Republicans or Democrats, we care not, so long as they will enforce the laws and attend to their duties. By appointing and keeping in power such officers as these, the Republicans have done much to bring on the troubles in Grant. It has encouraged the commission of all sorts of crime, and obliged well-disposed men to take up arms in self-defense and have recourse to violence. The Kellogg Sheriff of Rapides is a man against whom two or three indictments for horse-stealing are filed. The Conduct of Whittier, the United States Tax Collector, is the most infamous of all. He has collected over $50,000, not one cent of which is legally due the United States. His salary is $1,800 per year, yet he lives in grand style with his wife and children, keeping carriages and servants, and gives costly wine-suppers. He lives by systematic plunder and there is no appeal short of the Revenue Department at Washington. Time and again we have sent on papers exposing his rascality and begging for assistance. No attention is ever paid to them.

   "In the first week in January the Fusionists took possession of the offices in Grant Parish by force. The offense for which the Republicans were murdered at Colfax was in retaking them by the same means. Kellogg might have prevented all this blood-shed. He was warned weeks before the fatal Easter Sunday. I wrote him. myself, two weeks before, praying him. for God's sake,' to order on troops before it was too late; yet he never lifted a finger. He is exasperating the opposition and alienating his friends.

   "After Nash and the other McEnery officers had been dispossessed of their places, they set about to accomplish their revenge. Shaw, the Kellogg Sheriff, fearing trouble, enrolled a posse comitatus, consisting, necessarily, of negroes mostly, as they form the majority of the population. Rutland, Hudnot, the Fusion member of the House from Grant Parish, and Nash raised a gang of men from Grant and other Parishes, and began to scour the country around Colfax, committing all sorts of depredations, murdering the negroes, burning their houses, and driving off their stock. Every day the people flocked to the Court House at Colfax for protection, until nearly all the population was gathered there. The men as they came in were promptly ordered to join the posse, until it numbered between three and four hundred men. Armed men rode into tho town occasionally, and several fights took place. The negroes threw up a breast work around the Court House, and prepared themselves for defense as best they could. The negroes were all from Grant Parish alone. Those attacking them were gathered from a dozen different parishes, some coming from fifty miles away, and it is asserted that there were men from New Orleans in the ranks.

   "On the morning of Easter Sunday Hudont and Nash, at the head of their crowd, rode into Colfax and told Shaw he could have thirty minutes to get the women and children out of the way. They were sent out, and the fight began. It lasted until near sundown. I know that many whites were killed and wounded. The negroes stoutly contested the struggle, and old soldiers who were with Lee told me it was the hottest fighting they were ever in. At last Rutland's cannon was opened upon the negroes, and panic-stricken they fled to the Court House. The beseigers forced a negro to go up under their guns and set fire to the cypress-shingle roof, which could be easily reached from the outside. As the fire burned down into the terror-stricken, struggling, shrieking crowd of negroes, the half roasted wretches broke from the building, swinging handkerchiefs, pieces of their shirts, or anything of the kind they could lay hands on in token of surrender. The whites formed in front of the building and poured in a steady fire upon them as they came out. Hudnot sprang in front of his men and shouted to them to stop, as the negroes had surrendered. He fell dead shot by his own men. whether purposely or accidentally it cannot be determined. The negroes were not firing at the time. Men from his own gang tell me this is the true statement of the flag-of-truce story. Then the work went on, and in a few minutes a hundred and fifty of the negroes were killed. Thirty-seven were taken alive, marched down to the river, shot, one by one and thrown into the river. In the evening Shaw went to visit the house where Hudnot was lying. While there a gang came to the door and said they 'wanted him.' He went out and never came back. The male population of Colfax was almost annihilated.

   "Of the men who composed the attacking party I have this to say: There was not a representative man among them. Hardly any property-holders or tax-payers. All the men of any character or social position refused to take any part in the affair. But two of the men who went from Rapides Parish are upon the tax roll. Many of them were

OLD KLU-KLUX MEN.

They were idle, reckless scoundrels, or irrepressible, thoughtless young men just such men as are encouraged and sustained by the weakness and indecision of the Kellogg Government. The stories of the negro outrages are false; that one of their intending to take the white women for concubines, a silly one, trumped up to gain recruits. These poor blacks thought they could do what they had seen whites do so often, and had no idea of the fearful consequences of their mistake. In all this section the negro is wronged, robbed, and ill-treated past belief. A terrible persecution has been practiced against them ever since the war.

   "I believe there never was a race so abused, so swindeled, so defrauded by employers, and traders, and officers, and black men can get no justice. No one dare speak for him. He is naturally patient, faithful and kind. One word to those negroes in the trenches at Colfax, and they would have laid down their arms. But our people were determined upon a bloody massacre, and wanted no compromise.

   "For all these things the Republican party is indirectly responsible. They have the power and the strong arm of the National Government to back them. Why do they not exercise It? Give us courts and good officers and protect us. While Kellogg hesitates and compromises, and appoints Funionists to office, in tne endeavor to please both sides, this bloody revolutionary spirit is encouraged and strengthened. This State is not in a condition to be ruled by a kid glove government. I know our people; by fear alone they must be ruled, and when the iron hand is laid upon them they will be quiet, and such fiends as perpetrated the Colfax horror will sink away to their holes. Our people refuse to understand their position; that they have been subjugated; that the negroes are free, and their political and social equals. They refuse to accept this situation and reconcile themselves to it. We want force, we want an iron military rule to bring them to their senses."

STATEMENTS OF A NEGRO WOUNDED AT THE MASSACRE.

   A negro who was in the Court House and was wounded in the massacre, told me the following story, in his simple, pathetic manner: "I warned our people not to go into the Court House. I knowed it would be the end of 'em. But when the cannon went off they were all skeered, and huddled into the building like a flock of sheep. Then the burning roof began to fall on us, and every one was praying and shrieking and singing, and calling on God to have mercy. The flesh of those furderest from the do' began to roast. I could smell it. Our clothes was all on fire, and we broke fo' the do'. The white men shot us down as we came out. Then we rushed back, trampling each other down in the fire and smoke. The hair burnt off our heads, our clothes burning and skin roasting. But we had to make for the open air. Then Hudnot's men used their knives, revolvers, and gun stocks. Our people did not resist. It was

REGULAR BUTCHERY.

   One of the white men would grab a negro by the hair, jerk his head back, and another would cut his throat. They would shove their revolvers into our people's mouth's and fire them off. They smashed their heads with gun stocks and revolver butts, and stabbed right and left with their long knives. In a few minutes almost all our people were killed, except some who were taken prisoners. They were marched off to the woods and shot."

TESTIMONY OF ONE OF THE ASSAILANTS.

   A man who was in the attacking party said to me: "Our fellers came from Grant, Rapides, Catahoula, Franklin, Natchitoches, Bossier, Caddo, Winn and Winnsboro. We had about 250 to 300. The niggers fit us all day like the devil. Nigger'll never fight unless he is cornered. They stood musketry pretty well, but the howitzer was too much for them. When they first began to come out we used our guns, but when the whole crowd rushed out we begun on 'em with our knives and revolvers. We worked lively, but some got away. Most of these, however, was picked up in the woods afterwards and disposed of. I think we did the business for about a hundred around the Court House, perhaps more."

   "You took some prisoners, did you not?" said I.

   "Yes, we took thirty-seven. They came out so fast we couldn't dispose of them all."
   "What did you do with them?"

   "The boys took them down to the river and shot them, or cut their throats. Two of the boys would hold one up, another would give him the shooter between the eyes or draw his knife across his throat, and then they would pitch him into the water and take another. While this was going on. some of the fellers hung up a few on the trees around there, just by way of variety."

   "What became of Shaw?"

   "The men that took him handed him over to some of the Catahoula boys, and they took him on a little excursion to the woods. He got so scar't." continued my informant, grinning, "as he was riding along, that he fell out of the wagon and broke his neck, which was a very sad accident."

   "How many negroes do you think were killed?"

   "Nigh on to three hundred, I reckon, was put where they'll do the most good, from beginning to end of the Grant scrape. The job was well done. We sha'n't have no more trouble with niggers in Grant Parish. And when as clean a job as that is done in every parish in the State we shall begin to have some quiet, and niggers will know their place."

   "Very likely." said I, "considering that you killed nearly all the negroes in the parish."

   "Yes, and that is the only hope there is left for us."

A BRUTAL HORROR.

   Let the reader, who has shuddered over the horrid massacres which history records in times gone by, and thank Heaven that they were of a past age and impossible in the Christian enlightment of the present, consider that history records no deed more brutal, more horrible than this one, perpetrated in our own day, in our own land, under our own government. Not one-half the dreadful details can ever be known. Think of that bloody butchery before the Court House, of those burning, screaming, maddened wretches; of that cold-blood[e]d, deliberate series of executions beside the river. Picture in your imagination the death of Shaw, an old man of nearly seventy. He steps out of the house at the summons, and no one ever saw his face again. There is the flash of a torch amid the pine trees; from the lonely depths of the forest comes the muffled report of a musket; and the bleeding body of the old man is lying alone in the darkness, and the wretches who murdered him are slinking away in searoh of new victims.

   Something better than McEnery is needed here; something mightier than Kellogg. Twelve years ago Louisiana had a ruler who knew how to handle her. She needs him, or his like, again. F.D.M.

[Nebraska Advertiser, Brownsville, Nebraska, Thursday, May 15, 1873. Vol. 17.--No. 31. Pg. 1]
   And our treasonous government wants to UNCONSTITUTIONALLY restrict and/or disarm us? Knowing that evil such as above has occurred in the past on American soil? The traitors that desire to enact even more Constitutionally perverse 'gun control' can go STRAIGHT TO HELL. They should be arrested and tried for treason, and have the sentence carried out immediately on public television.

   Anyone think I'm being a tad bit too harsh? Think again: 

Title 18, U.S.C., Section 241

Conspiracy Against Rights

This statute makes it unlawful for two or more persons to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person of any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the United States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same).

It further makes it unlawful for two or more persons to go in disguise on the highway or on the premises of another with the intent to prevent or hinder his/her free exercise or enjoyment of any rights so secured.

Punishment varies from a fine or imprisonment of up to ten years, or both; and if death results, or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years, or for life, or may be sentenced to death.

Title 18, U.S.C., Section 242

Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law

This statute makes it a crime for any person acting under color of law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom to willfully deprive or cause to be deprived from any person those rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution and laws of the U.S.

This law further prohibits a person acting under color of law, statute, ordinance, regulation or custom to willfully subject or cause to be subjected any person to different punishments, pains, or penalties, than those prescribed for punishment of citizens on account of such person being an alien or by reason of his/her color or race.

Acts under "color of any law" include acts not only done by federal, state, or local officials within the bounds or limits of their lawful authority, but also acts done without and beyond the bounds of their lawful authority; provided that, in order for unlawful acts of any official to be done under "color of any law," the unlawful acts must be done while such official is purporting or pretending to act in the performance of his/her official duties. This definition includes, in addition to law enforcement officials, individuals such as Mayors, Council persons, Judges, Nursing Home Proprietors, Security Guards, etc., persons who are bound by laws, statutes ordinances, or customs.

Punishment varies from a fine or imprisonment of up to one year, or both, and if bodily injury results or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire shall be fined or imprisoned up to ten years or both, and if death results, or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
   Keep pushing We The People, you vile and treasonous hired servants. And We The People just might decide to PUSH BACK.

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