meeting of white citizens, at which there were adopted resolutions to employ white labor instead of Negro, to banish the editor of the Record, and to send away from the city the printing-press in the office of that paper; and a committee of twenty-five was appointed to see that these resolutions were carried into effect within twenty-four hours.  In the course of the terrible day that followed the printing office was destroyed, several white Republicans were driven from the city, and nine Negroes were killed at once, though no one could say with accuracy just how many more lost their lives or were seriously wounded before the trouble was over.

Charles W. Chesnutt, in The Marrow of Tradition, has given a faithful portrayal of these disgraceful events, the Wellington of the story being Wilmington.  Perhaps the best commentary on those who thus sought power was afforded by their apologist, a Presbyterian minister and editor, A.J.  McKelway, who on this occasion and others wrote articles in the Independent and the Outlook justifying the proceedings.  Said he:  “It is difficult to speak of the Red Shirts without a smile.  They victimized the Negroes with a huge practical joke....  A dozen men would meet at a crossroad, on horseback, clad in red shirts or calico, flannel or silk, according to the taste of the owner and the enthusiasm of his womankind.  They would gallop through the country, and the Negro would quietly make up his mind that his interest in political affairs was not a large one, anyhow.  It would be wise not to vote, and wiser not to register to prevent being dragooned into voting on election day.”  It thus appears that the forcible seizure of the political rights of people, the killing and wounding of many, and the compelling of scores to leave their homes amount in the end to not more than a “practical joke.”

One part of the new program was the most intense opposition to Federal Negro appointees anywhere in the South.  On the morning of February 22, 1898, Frazer B. Baker, the colored postmaster at Lake City, S.C., awoke to find his house in flames.  Attempting to escape, he and his baby boy were shot and killed and their bodies consumed in the burning house.  His wife and the other children were wounded but escaped.  The Postmaster-General was quite disposed to see that justice was done in this case; but the men charged with the crime gave the most trivial alibis, and on Saturday, April 22, 1899, the jury in the United States Circuit Court at Charleston reported its failure to agree on a verdict.  Three years later the whole problem was presented strongly to President Roosevelt.  When Mrs. Minne Cox, who was serving efficiently as postmistress at Indianola, Miss., was forced to resign because of threats, he closed the office; and when there was protest against the appointment of Dr. William D. Crum as collector of the port of Charleston, he said, “I do not intend to appoint any unfit man