Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 13.djvu/67

 66 Southern Historical Society Papers.

proposed to destroy all republican government. Chamberlain is made the supreme judge of what is meant by a Republican Govern- ment, and all the available forces of the United States are put at his disposal to wield the destinies of a State which loathed, abhorred and had rejected him.

The President was guilty of a high crime against representative government. A legislature had been elected which put the Demo- crats in power. Four men of more than questionable character, three of whom were candidates for election, had undertaken to say that the election in two counties was void. They thus changed the balance of power by usurping a function which the Constitution gives exclusively to the several branches of the Legislature, and the dictum of these few men was to overrule the voice of the State; and this was the Republican Government which the President ordered his soldiers to defend.

The troops were ordered to protect Chamberlain against Demo- cratic violence. No one knew better than Chamberlain himself that the only party that contemplated violence was his own party. They had put the Democrats to a very severe test, and found them true to the programme which had in the beginning been mapped out for them by their great leader. They bore with patience the outrages and injuries which had been put upon them. Arrest after arrest of some of their best citizens had been made for causes which the Gov- ernment knew to be frivolous, which had no end in view but to in- timidate, possibly to excite to madness. The party of violence was the Radical party. All this violence, all this intimidation was for the purpose of keeping in office a man who knew that he was utterly repudiated by the people, and could not sustain himself one hour without the aid of Federal bayonets; and this was what President Grant called sustaining Republican government in South Carolina. The next scene in the drama shows his method of sustaining it.

MEETING OF THE LEGISLATURE.

The Legislature was to meet on Tuesday, November 28th. The attendance of both parties was full. Large numbers of citizens from all parts of the State were in Columbia, and great excitement pre- vailed on account of the. actions respectively of the Board of Can- vassers, of the Supreme Court, and of Judge Bond. It was now to be demonstrated whether we had a Republican government, whether the will of the people, expressed through the ballot-box, was to be