Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 13.djvu/58

 Last Chapter of Reconstruction in South Carolina. 57

by the Cabinet of sufficient importance to disturb or interrupt the recreations of their august chief. The delay was not very long. The President returned on the lyth, and before night a proclamation was issued commanding all Rifle clubs to disperse, disband and dis- arm, and ordering all the disposable force of the army to be sent to General Ruger to be employed in maintaining peace in South Carolina.

In making his demand on the President for aid, he must have declared that it was impossible on account of the disturbed state of the country for the Legislature to meet. If he did not make such a declaration, Grant could not have complied with his request ; if he did make it, then every man, woman and child in South Carolina, and Chamberlain knew, as well as anybody else, that this declaration was a lie. I have no words to soften the expression. It was a bare- faced and a base lie. and Chamberlain knew that it was so

Thus the man on horseback, so confidently promised by the dis- reputable Patterson, had come at the call of Chamberlain. He came not to protect life and preserve peace, but to awe the whites, and destroy every vestige of Republican government in South Carolina. We shall soon see what was his method of restoring peace to the distracted country.

The arrests of Democratic citizens, both black and white, continued up to the time of the election. How many were arrested in Aiken, Barnwell and Edgefield I do not know; there must have been over two hundred. Excitement thickens as we approach the time of the elections. The negroes regarded the troops as sent, not so much to protect them as to intimidate the whites. Every means that could be devised was tried to intimidate colored Democrats, but as this was on the right side, the commissioners took no notice of them. Their object was to keep the polls free for Radical voters. If Demo- crats were hindered or impeded in the exercise of the franchise it was not worth their notice.

CAINHOY.

The next serious riot that occurred was in St. Thomas' parish, near the village of Cainhoy, in which eight men were murdered, their bodies being shockingly mutilated.

On the 1 6th October a steamboat left Charleston for Cainhoy, with about sixty Democrats, nearly all white, and about as many Radical negroes, with Bowen, the sheriff of Charleston, at their head. By agreement the meeting at Cainhoy was to be a joint meeting to be