but any of those negroes would come to me at that very time with his money and get me to save it for him, and take care of it for him.  He would put all his confidence in me so far as his money was concerned, but when it would come to politics he would vote with this man, who probably did not own the coat he had on his back.  Those kind of inferences were what did do us in the South very material damage.  Let me illustrate that by a riot in my own county.  In Chicot County, in 1872, there was a proposition to impose upon the county a railroad tax of $250,000 for the purpose of building a railroad.

Q. What proportion of the taxable property of the county would that have been?  —­A.  Our whole assessed valuation was about $1,500,000 at that time.  This was brought out by a promise that if the appropriation was made, the levees on our river should be built and this road would run on the levees.  At that time the whole of the local government in Chicot County was in the hands of men who did not own any property in the county, and had just come down there and been elected by the negroes, who have a very large majority in that county.  This tax was a very great imposition upon us.  At that time there was a negro attorney at Lake Village, who was one of the prime movers in this thing.  The planters knew that this was only intended as a speculation upon the county, for the vote was afterwards taken, the appropriation was made, and not one foot of levee was put up, and not one foot of that railroad was built in Chicot County.  Still we are mandamused now for the interest on that debt that was put on us by that kind of influence.  One of our planters was remonstrating with this negro attorney about this debt and told him it was an imposition on the property owners, and that the thing ought not to be done, when the man became violent and insolent, and it resulted in a difficulty between this planter and the negro.  The planter had a little pen-knife in his pocket, the blade not longer than my little finger; he struck the negro with it and it happened accidentally to hit him on a vital point and killed him.  The sheriff of the county was a negro.  The planter, with two innocent parties in whose house this occurrence took place at the county-seat, in Lake Village, was arrested and lodged in jail.  A few days afterwards—­probably not more than two or three—­nearly every negro in the county was summoned to Lake Village, and they rose like so many locusts, coming in from every direction, took those three men out of jail shot them to pieces, murdered them.  It was such an outrage that the people from Memphis and Vicksburg and from the hill countries, commenced to come in there with companies, started down with companies.  On investigation we found out that the sheriff of the county had exercised his authority to send out to the ignorant negroes of the county and summon them to the village, and these fellows went because they were afraid not to obey the mandate of the sheriff.  At that