Transcribed by Mollie Gainey-Stanley IN NORTH CAROLINA. Interest in the Election-A Dastardly Murder-The Kuklux-Republican Organization. From Our Special Correspondent. RALEIGH, Thursday, July 25, 1872. Only those who are in the center of this political cauldron can form a correct idea of how it seethes. No one who tarries here even for a day can fail to see how general and intense is the interest in the election of Thursday next, which is to decide the control, not only of North Carolina, but of the nation during the next four years. Each side being firmly convinced that this is the case, is straining every nerve to obtain the victory, and is using every appliance known to honorable political warfare to accomplish that result. Except in the notable case of the employment by the Greeley Committee at New-York of such disreputable tools as Wm. P. Wood and Jacob Blumenburg, and the attempt here by the Democracy to manufacture an intimidation case out of an ordinary street fight between a Negro man and a Negro boy. I know of nothing illegitimate which either side has attempted during this canvass. Both are supplied with money, which so far as I have been able to learn, is being properly used for the legitimate expenses that attach to a political campaign, except in the case of Wood, and the cry of fraud and corruption, which is already raised to explain the crushing defeat which the Democracy see they are certain to meet here, is more baseless than such cries generally are. A DASTARDLY MURDER. But while the general action of both sides through leaders and State Committees is thus commendable, there have been many individual acts that are without excuse. The facts concerning some of these have come out slowly, and this is notably the case in reference to the murder of a colored man named George Pearsall, in Sancta township, Duplin County, on the 10th instant. This affair was first represented as the slaying of a conservative, and when this version was doubted, the Democrats had a vast deal to say about a base Republican howl about the revival of Kukluxism. As a tragedy has been thus misrepresented, I think it best to give the precise facts as derived from a private letter received here today from the scene of the massacre. On the 10th of July the Duplin County candidate had a joint discussion at Sancta. Whiskey was abundant, and during the day a white man named Edward Williams, who was under its influence, struck several negroes with a stick in drunken sport. No one was seriously injured by his frolic, but George Pearsall, whose father had been struck, became offended, and said he would allow no white man to hit him. Pearsall had also been drinking, and nothing but angry words occurred between him and Williams. Late in the afternoon, when Pearsall started to go home, he was taken in charge by three white men, George Mercer, John Baker, and Thomas Hall, two of whom took an arm each of Pearsall, and the other pushed him on from behind. In this way the party proceeded down the road, Pearsall constantly struggling to free himself, and the others constantly forcing him on. About a mile from the place of meeting the party disappeared from the public road. Not long afterward the report of fire-arms was heard, but no one appears to have paid any attention to the matter, and it was not until the following Monday, when the wife of Pearsall had become alarmed by his long absence, that the murder was discovered by finding the body of Pearsall in the woods, near to the spot where his captors dragged him from the high road. The body was pierced with three pistol balls, the skull was fractured, and after this bloody work the savages had mutilated the body by cutting the head entirely from the trunk. They had then left the spot without any attempt to bury the body of their victim, and when found it had been partly devoured by buzzards. There was a Coroner’s inquest held, and, the jury rendering a verdict that Pearsall had come to his death at the hands of George Mercer, John Baker, and Thomas Hall, there was some pretense made by the Sheriff of searching for them to arrest them, but is scarcely necessary to say that they were still at large four days ago, which was ten days after the murder, although they are understood to be still in the county. This fact alone would establish the case as a political murder, but in addition it is undeniable that the victim was a black Republican and the murderers are white Democrats. Pearsall was known as one abjectly poor, so there could be no hope of plunder as an incentive to the crime, and his murder coming close upon his trifling dispute with Williams, there is no denial in the region where it occurred that this was prompted solely by partisan malignity. Many Democrats of the county have expressed their sincere abhorrence at this diabolical crime, but there are, unfortunately, many others who only think it particularly unfortunate at this particular time, and the Democratic Press of the State has been so busy with denying the facts, that there has not been time for it to denounce the spirit to which such deeds are due. The Republicans look dolefully upon this mangled corpse as a first fruit of the unholy alliance between Greeleyism and Democracy, and if such a thing as the triumph of the alliance could possibly occur on Thursday next, thousands of them would be already flying from the State to save their lives, not because the Greeley leaders desire any wholesale butchery, but because that success would inevitably lead, in despite of the Democratic chiefs, to the revival and dominance in the State of the Kuklux. REVIVING KUKLUXISM. Nothing can utterly crush out the spirit of Kukluxism, which is only that of the rebellion concentrated, but the ascendancy in the nation of the party which defeated the rebellion in armed conflict. There is everywhere manifested here the spirit which drove this State into secession, and since the war has moistened her soul with the blood of her best citizens, shed by midnight assassins for political reasons. Although the Democratic leaders may endeavor, from motives of policy, to restrain these miscreants, just now they find it a very difficult task, and after the election of Greeley impossible. Precisely the same results would follow that election as would have attended that of Seymour in 1868, and no one more forcibly portrayed the horrors such an event would have brought upon the country than the present Democratic candidate. Even the nomination of Greeley, which is deemed an evidence of the disintegration of the Republican Party, and its consequent destruction, has been attended with evil results, as it has emboldened the Kuklux to hope for success, and they already show more signs of life than they have exhibited since their dens were broken up by the enforcement of the Kuklux law. I have said that this election is the one the most free of any which has occurred in the State since the war, and while this is true, its result will be to some extent determined by Kuklux terrorism deterring Republicans from voting, at least in the Counties of Caswell, Chatham and Duplin, and perhaps in some other localities. The Democrats are also using everywhere a means of preventing a full Republican vote, which has been used by both parties in many of the States, which, however legitimate it may be, will undoubtedly lead to some scenes of violence here and prevent a full Republican vote. The plan is to have two bitter partisans at every polling-place to challenge every Republican voter, and thus in the counties having a large colored population prevent the vote from being polled by the time which will be consumed in this challenging. In Democratic counties it is expected that the mere facts that their votes will be challenged will deter some of the more timid Republicans from approaching the polls for fear of personal violence. It is also expected that in some places these challengers will be men who are intent upon violence, and will neglect nothing that will tend to produce it. To guard against the danger to be apprehended from this challenging two reliable, discreet Republicans have been selected for each township, who will do all this is possible to protect their voters, and take care that the Democrats keep within the letter of the law in the exercise of their right of challenging. There has been no charge so far as I have been able to learn, on either side, of intended election fraud, except that provoked by the appearance of such characters as Wood and Blumenberg, and consequently, there is no cause for challenging, and it can have no other purpose than to prevent a full Republican vote from being polled. REPUBLICAN ORGANIZATION. But there is good reason to hope that even this democratic device for preventing an expression of popular opinion will have very little effect. All the advantages of thorough organization are upon the Republican side. No man ever labored so zealously and efficiently in a political campaign as has Senator John Pool in this, and it is no small compliment that, while the Press of the State is reeking with charges of corruption and infamous conduct on the part of nearly all of both sides who are prominent in the canvass, no charge of a serious character has been made against him. He has some able assistants in managing the campaign, prominent among whom are Gen. Joseph C. Abbott, of Wilmington, formerly a Senator; Col. I.J. Young, of Raleigh, and Thomas D. Keogh, of Greensboro. The candidates for Congress, but especially Judge Thomas, Judge Settle, Mayor-Smith and Mr. Dockeney are active and efficient, and have by the speeches which they have made in nearly every township of their respective districts done a work of incalculable value in the enlightenment of the people. Gov. Caldwell has also been of great service, especially in the western part of the State, where he has done most of his canvassing, and where he is yet engaged in his work. The labors of all these leaders have had the effect of thoroughly arousing the Republicans to the importance of the pending contest, and as a consequence there has been in most localities a thorough organization of the party by townships and counties. Except in the more violent Kuklux counties, there is no need to doubt that nearly the full Republican vote will be polled. The frequent and exhaustive discussions of the questions at issue as usual have had the effect to recruit the Republican ranks, as the Democracy cannot stand the light here any better than elsewhere, nor so well. In addition there are many who are apathetic in consequence of the nomination of Greeley, and, while this will have much greater effect upon the vote in November than now, it will still cause some defections in this campaign. All these causes combined cannot fail to give the Republicans a very large majority. The Democrats have indeed given up all pretense of being able to carry the State, even with the aid of their challenging trick, and are correspondingly despondent and desperate. They decline to show their letters from the various portions of the State, giving the conditions of public sentiment, and in their distress seek relief in the stale device of striking off and putting up posters announcing Schurz, Trumbull and Thurman as speakers. If these gentlemen fill all the appointments which have been made for them they will be kept extremely busy from now until the election, as each of them is billed for several speeches each day at points many miles apart. In consequence of this recklessness in announcing them, it is believed that neither of them will be here at all, and that they are billed with knowledge of this fact solely for the purpose of gathering crowds for the home Democrats and such liberal Republicans as Detective Wood and Convict Blumenburg. Unless poor Tipton is wandering about the country somewhere, amusing himself and making Republican votes by abusing Gen. Grant, all the prominent men from abroad who came here to help swell the Democratic majority have gone home thoroughly disgusted. Senator Stockton, being a man of sense, saw at once that there was no such majority to be swelled, but Doolittle, who thought he was going to be elected Governor of Wisconsin last Fall, required several additional days to discover the same fact, but he, too, finally departed. It is a remarkable fact that wherever Doolittle talks there is a decided increase in Republican majorities, and the fact must be due to that popular detestation of James R. Doolittle, his works and his ways, which Mr. Greeley declared to be the cause of the increase of the Republican majority in Wisconsin. Doolittle, it is understood, is engaged to speak in Maine for the Amalgamation, and the Republican majority there can be confidently reckoned at fifteen thousand, instead of ten thousand, as last year. Poor Tipton is equally unfortunate, and with these two as their principal two distinguished speakers from abroad-excepting always “Detective” Wood and Convict Blumenberg, specially engaged by Ethan Allen-it is no wonder the disgusted Democracy despair of success. Some of them are beginning to lose their temper at the prospect, and are following an example of flagrant discourtesy set them by Tipton and Doolittle, when they attempted to intrude upon a Republican meeting by their demand upon Secretary Boutwell to “divide time.” Judge Fowle stuck to Senator Wilson with singular pertinacity, asking for a division of time at Beaufort, and again at Goldsboro, but it was reserved for Secretary Delano to be flagrantly insulted by the demand of “Detective” Wood to “divide time.” In no one case has a distinguished Republican arrived at the place he was announced to speak, but he was met with a demand from somebody for a division of time, and invited to descent into the scurrilities of political discussion. Such persistence in these attempts to intrude upon Republican meetings show how desperate has become the condition of the Democracy, and how greatly they dread the presentation of Republican truth to the people. THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY. I have in this letter endeavored to present some views of the campaign which have heretofore been neglected, with the hope that they may assist the public in arriving at a correct idea of the influence at work here, upon which the result is largely dependent. While the dread of the Kuklux and the Democratic expedients, which have been mentioned, may have the effect of somewhat decreasing the Republican majority, there is no cause as yet to change my previous estimate that the majority will be at least ten thousand. There is one fact which is indisputable, and to which those Republicans in the North who propose to vote against their party can not give too much attention: There is not in the entire State of North Carolina a score of men who have heretofore acted with the Republican Party who have gone off to Greeley. Here, where the issue of the contest can be most clearly seen, the Republican Party has formed in solid phalanx around Gen. Grant, and presents an unbroken front to its enemy. E.C. The New York Times Published: July 29, 1872 |