"Presidents of clubs are requested to report to county chairman, who can be found at the rooms of the executive committee, in the rear of the town hall, up stairs. The clubs will be earnestly enjoined, by those in authority, to remain in line and under command of their respective presidents until they are turned over to some higher officer, from whom they will receive orders during the day."
Ex-Senator Swails, of Williamsburg County, and also deputy United States marshal, has committed the unpardonable sin against the Wade-Hampton, Hamburg-Butler, shot-gun Democracy, by speaking at Republican meetings, for which offence he has been twice shot at, and finally driven from the county, having been visited by the Democratic Executive Committee, accompanied by a band of Red Shirts or Rifle Clubs, and presented with these good Democratic resolutions:—
Resolved, That S. A. Swails be required to leave Williamsburg in ten days.
Resolved, That he is a high-handed robber.
Resolved, That he and his rioters be held responsible for all incendiarism which may happen.
Resolved, That unless the above be complied with, he must forfeit his life.
These facts were yesterday brought to the attention of the President by Congressman Rainey and Mr. Swails, and it is reported that he thinks something ought to be done about it, and says just what the man whom he made Governor of South Carolina said: "Tell the people they shall have all the protection the law can give." Wade Hampton has the power to fulfil his promise, and it is apparent he never intended to give the Republicans the protection they asked, and we fear that President Hayes is putting them off with a promise of the protection he is well aware he cannot give.
These South Carolinians come to Washington and claim government protection to their persons and property while in the exercise of their constitutional political rights. The President "thinks something ought to be done about it"! Wonderful! So does an old hen when the hawks are after her chickens. But the difference between the two is this: the hen blusters about and immediately calls her subjects under her wings, thus giving them all the protection in her power. But the President thinks something ought to be done, but does nothing worthy of the occasion.
Wade Hampton promises "all the protection the law can give," and that was none at all while in his hands to administer, for the reason that the theory of the shot-gun Democracy is, that the negro has no rights that the white man is bound to protect.
While the South is entitled to the palm of victory for shot-gun Democracy, the North is a fair competitor for doughface flunkyism. Ex-Senator Swails, by the testimony of his personal friends in Boston, bears a character the direct opposite of that given him in the following paragraph from the Philadelphia "Times." While despotism is the rule in the South, owing to the natural soil in which it is nurtured, we are happy to believe that flunkyism in the superlative degree at the North is the exception.