The Daily Gazette

WHY DEMOCRATIC ELECTION FRAUDS
WERE IMPOSSIBLE IN
THAT STATE.
From Mr. Bayard's Minority Report.
The reconstruction policy of Congress
had fully and perfectly forced the
institutions of the State of Mississippi
into the most entire subjection and
conformity with its provisions. What
Mississippi was at the time of the last
election of Governor Ames in 1873:
she was the work of reconstruction
by Congress. The will of her people,
their tastes, their virtues and their
faults had been melted and run into a
mould fashioned by the will of Congress
alone. If her institutions were defective,
if they were not conducive to the ends
of good government, if they were
arranged with an unwise disregard of
the condition and wants of her people,
that people are no more responsible
than the population of France, for they
had no voice. Such as she was in 1873
the Congress of the United States had
made her. The State Constitution was
moulded in accordance with the will
of Congress. The legislation under it
had been enacted by men placed in
power by the Federal Government.
The ruling principle of that legislation
seems to have been to lead as much
power as possible directly into the
hands of the Executive, in which the
reins were placed. The institution of
suffrage was of course the proposed
basis, and to control this the machinery
of elections was placed absolutely in
the hands of the Governor, who had
the sole power to appoint those officers
who, in their turn, had the power of
appointment of the registrars of every
county, who in their turn appointed
the election officers throughout the
State in their respective counties, and
supervised the elections and returns,
thus gathering the whole control of
elections in a single executive hand.
This was the state of things when Governor
Ames took his seat on the first day of
January, 1874, elected in the month of
November previous. There was not an
official of the State who was not a
member of the Republican party. There
was not a county official to be appointed
by the Governor who was not in close
affinity with him. In all the Republican
counties, and all were Republican in
which negroes were in a majority, every
official was a member of the same party.
Thus we see that the entire control of
the State was in the hands of Governor
Ames and his party associates. At page
30 of his deposition the fact is stated
by him as follows:
You have stated the violence and intimidation
to have existed in the Republican counties
of the State? A. Yes, sir.
Q. You have not referred to violence in any
but Republican counties? A. No, sir.
Q. Such is the fact, is it not? A. Yes, sir.
Q. Were not the, all these justices of the peace,
chancellors, the judiciary, and the machinery
for choosing juries in the hands of the dominant
party in those counties? A. Yes, sir.
Q. I need not ask you if all the United States
officers in that State were not members of the
Republican party; that was so, was it not? A.
Yes, sir.
Q. Then the grand juries and the petit juries,
and the judges, and the sheriffs, and the
supervisors, by whom the jurors were selected,
were all controlled by the dominant party in
those counties? A. They were all belonging to
the dominant party.
Of course every official of the Federal
Government, district judges, district
attorneys, marshals, deputy marshals,
supervisors, postmasters, revenue officers,
were all of the same party, and necessarily
active adherents. It may be truly said that
there was no trace whatever of official power
in the State of Mississippi in the hands of the
Democratic party until the first day of January,
1876.