“We had not the authority nor disposition to kill a traitor, and consequently we had no effective remedy against a betrayal.  When the news of our demoralized condition reached the whites it gave them fresh courage, and they have dominated us ever since.  They carry on the elections.  We stay in our fields all day long on election day and scarcely know what is going on.  Not long since a white man came through here and distributed republican ballots.  The white people captured him and cut his body into four pieces and threw it in the Ouachita River.  Since then you can’t get any man to venture here to distribute ballots.

“Just before the last presidential campaign, two brothers, Samuel and John Bowser, colored, happened to go down to New Orleans.  Things are not so bad down there as they are up here in Northern Louisiana.  These two brothers each secured a republican party ballot, and on election day somewhat boastfully cast them into the ballot box.  There is, as you have perhaps heard, a society here known as ‘Nigger Rulers.’  The postmaster of this place is president of the society, and the teacher of the white public school is the captain of the army thereof.

“They sent word to the Bowser brothers that they would soon be there to whip them.  The brothers prepared to meet them.  They cut a hole in the front side of the house, through which they could poke a gun.  Night came on, and true to their word the ‘Nigger Rulers’ came.  Samuel Bowser fired when they were near the house and one man fell dead.  All of the rest fled to the cover of the neighboring woods.  Soon they cautiously returned and bore away their dead comrade.  They made no further attack that night.

“The brothers hid out in the woods.  Hearing of this and fearing that the men would make their escape the whites gathered in force and hemmed in the entire settlement on all sides.  For three days the men hid in the woods, unable to escape because of the guard kept by the whites.  The third night a great rain came up and the whites sought the shelter of their homes.

“The brothers thus had a chance to escape.  John escaped into Arkansas, but Samuel, poor fool, went only forty miles, remaining in Louisiana.  The mob forced one of our number, who escorted him on horseback, to inform them of the road that Samuel took.  In this way they traced and found him.  They tied him on a horse and brought him back here with them.  They kept him in the woods three days, torturing him.  On the third day we heard the loud report of a gun which we supposed ended his life.  None of us know where he lies buried.  You can judge from this why we neglect voting.”

This speech wound up Belton’s political career in Cadeville.  He thanked the man for the information, assuring him that it would be of great value to him in knowing how to shape his course.

After Belton had been at Cadeville a few years, he had a number of young men and women to graduate from the various departments of his school.  He invited the pastor of a leading white church of Monroe to deliver an oration on the day of commencement exercises.  The preacher came and was most favorably impressed with Belton’s work, as exhibited in the students then graduating.  He esteemed Belton as a man of great intellectual power and invited him to call at his church and house if he ever came to Monroe.