box as many of these tickets as he desired. When the whites arrived they felt confident that something was wrong, but what it was they could not exactly tell, but at the close of the polls, when the ballot box was opened the secret was revealed. Several hundred of these "little jokers" bounced out and they were counted just as though they had been honestly voted. The whites protested against counting them, but Bowes and the balance of the board said that they were in the box and must be counted. A large majority was by this means sent in for Stearns, from this poll, and Bowes was lionized by the Governor and his managers for this heroic act. A "Little Joker" House Misc. Doc. no. 31, part ii, 45 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 90. A "little joker" was a ballot printed with small type on thin paper in order that several might be folded within a regular ballot and deposited without detection. This one was used in the Florida election of 1876. The scheme was later used by the whites to overcome negro majorities. The ticket below is the size of the original. The Ghost of the Confederacy [1876] Statement of a The fear of Davis was thus kept up House Report no. 262, 43 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 181. white Democrat, in Alabama. as long as he lived. [1874] A FEW days after the election [1874], the Hon. Mr. Pelham, M. C., who was here at the election, passed up through my neighborhood. The negroes knew him; I didn't. He had canvassed the district with the candidate here. I had a couple of negroes with me on the side of the road cutting a tree when Mr. Pelham passed. . . They asked him how the election had Why Adam Kirk was a Democrat House Report no. 262, 43 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 106. Statement of an A WHITE man raised me. I was raised in the house of old man Billy Kirk. He raised me as a body servant. The class that he belongs to seems nearer to me than the northern white man, and actually, since the war, everything I have got is by their aid and their assistance. They have helped me raise up my family and have stood by me, and whenever I want a doctor, no matter what hour of the day or night, he is called in whether I have got a cent or not. And when I want any assistance I can get it from them. I think they have got better principles and better character than the republicans. Fear of Spells and Charms Senate Report no. 527, 44 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 1052. Statement of Reuben Davis of Mississippi, former member of Congress. [1875] THEY have intimidated them by telling them if they should dare to vote with the white people, democrats, that the colored people would as they always believed in what they called "spells" or "charms" - that they would fill them with lizards and scorpions and snakes, and bring diseases upon them, so that they would die; that they would be overthrown in their social relations; that if they got sick they would not visit them; if they died they would not accompany their remains to the grave. Very large numbers of colored people have told me often that 1 they have desired to vote with the white people, but said they were afraid to do it; afraid of their own people, and afraid they would be murdered; they would have these spells put upon them, and they would be excluded from all social intercourse, and that they could have no intercourse with the white people, and that it would be a system of ostracism they would be unwilling to encounter or endure. Negro Democrats in South Carolina Senate Misc. Doc. no. 48, 44 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 592, 597, 959, 963. Statements made by negro Democrats. Numbers of negroes voted for Hampton in 1876. [1876] [1] THERE was a woman down there, and she run up to the colored men [Democrats] that had red shirts on, and there was a colored man who had been living in Isam Mitchell's house, and three colored women tore his shirt off from him. . . They just knocked him from one side to the other; and Ralph Nowell, he came up at the time and said, "See here, what are you doing with this man?" And they said, "He is a Hampton man, and he has got on a red shirt." Ralph said, "See here, its no difference what he has on, you can't interfere with him;" he picked up his hat and put it on and went off without his shirt. They tore every rag off from him, and the red shirt too.. [2] They said . . the Yankees are coming up here, and all you that voted the democratic ticket you will be shot down by the time you do it; and a good while after I voted, sure enough there was a parcel of Yankees come down there, and I thought they had come down there to shoot me sure enough, and I didn't know any better till I saw them coming up in the wagon, and Anderson and myself was going into the swamp. [3] Then I were disbanded from church, for they said they wanted no democrat to come into church. . and my wife were treated the same. . . They slipped away from their wives and others, and numbers of them on account of their wives, that would have voted the democratic tickets, that were 'buked so by their wives and other women that they were feared to vote, and up to this very day there's one colored man that his wife " has left him, and has not had anything to do with him in two months. Some came to me on the day of election and got tickets and slipped in and voted the democratic ticket, that I had no more idea that they were going to vote the democratic ticket than that I am sleeping now. [4] Good gracious alive, if abusing would kill me I would have been dead long ago. But I didn't pay no attention to it at all. Me and my daughter and another girl that was staying with me, they wanted to go to a party, and I says, "I don't want to go." And she said, "Let's go;" and I said, "Let's not go for they will get into a row and abuse me." And she said, "I reckon not," and so prevailed upon me to go; and when I went, the first man I approached, he says, "You God damned democrat, I have a good mind to just pull my pistol out and shoot you." . . I wanted to be peaceable. There was one man, he says to me, "You damned democrat nigger, you can't come in my house for nothing. If you do I will kick you out." I says, "From all accounts I don't spect you will have any house very long, because I know you haven't paid for no house, and when your year is up, if you don't do right you will have to leave." Says I, "I am twenty-one, and I am going to vote the democratic ticket anyhow; and I think that I feel it my duty to do so; and if I can't support my family the way I am going on, I want a change in the government. I never have got no good out of the republican party. I never have got ten cents out of the party." Political Intimidation Nordhoff, Cotton States in 1875, pp. 11, 22, 89, 93. [1875] imagine this As to "intimidation," it is a serious mistake to was as much as a negro's life was worth to vote the Democratic ticket; and even to refuse to obey the caucus of his party caused him to be denounced as a "Bolter," and to be forsaken by his friends, and even by his wife or sweetheart. That there has also been Democratic intimidation is undeniable; but it does not belong to the Southern Republicans to complain of it. In North Carolina, a leading and intelligent negro told me that he and others of his race were opposed to the Civil Rights Bill, but they did not dare to let their opposition be known, because, as he said, they would at once have been denounced among their people, and would have lost all influence with them. In Wilmington, a young negro lawyer was mobbed by his people, because he ventured to oppose corrupt candidates for office. This was told me by a colored man. . . In their political relations among each other, they are as intol erant and unscrupulous as ignorant men suddenly possessed of political rights are sure to be. The caucus rules with a singular tyranny among them. The slightest assertion of political independence is resented. The restive negro's name is sent out through the country or district, with "Bolter" affixed to it; and this fixes upon him the stigma of treason. The church, his friends, the young women, if he is unmarried, all avoid him; and he is effectually under a ban of ex-communication. . . Nor did the candidates confine themselves to verbal intimidation. One circulated an "order" to the colored people to vote for him, signed, "U. S. Grant, President." Another, J. S. Diggs, now and at that time county solicitor, [Dallas County, Alabama], and in May arrested under criminal indictment by the grand jury for embezzlement and bribery, circulated through the county a printed warning against his opponent: REPUBLICANS, BEWARE! Any one found with tickets with the on it will be prosecuted and sent to the J. S. Diggs, Solicitor, Dallas County. |