District-Attorney Northrup has the case in charge, and will, said a member of the Cabinet to your correspondent to-day, make an energetic investigation of the outrage and report the facts promptly. There is no reason to doubt that he will do his whole duty and make a fearless investigation of the affair, which, according to the Democratic account, was brutal in the extreme. The Administration, said the Cabinet Minister further, will see that the rights of the colored people in South Carolina are maintained, and to this end will, if necessary, go to the full extent of the United States laws.
We may be too faithless in this matter, we hope we are, but when "investigations" shall result in the punishment of criminals, instead of their protection from further molestation, we may have more confidence that justice will triumph in rebeldom.
VIRGINIA COMES NEXT.
"President Hayes, who is attending an agricultural fair at Winchester, Virginia, made a hard money speech yesterday, and quoted Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and other distinguished Virginians in favor of sound money."—Traveller, Oct. 17.
While the President was making stump speeches in Winchester, in the direct line of civil service reform, as he understands it we suppose, the shot-gun brigade were at Hicksford demonstrating the fruits of his Southern policy. The "Traveller" states this case in the following strain of sarcasm.
A "saucy" negro was shot at Hicksford, Virginia, yesterday. It was a political meeting, of course. A Republican was speaking, and the negro had the audacity to applaud his sentiments. This was in the Court House. A leader of the Democracy named Reese, not wishing to soil the temple of justice with blood, called the negro out of the building and promptly shot him dead. There were four hundred colored men present and this shooting will be a lesson for them. They will now know better than to applaud Republican speakers, or vote a Republican ticket.
CONCLUSION.
We have thus spread out the present condition of the freedmen, before the American people. It is a plain case for the former, and not a hard one for the latter.
The whole question of emigration, as it now stands, lies in three propositions, one of which every freedman must choose.
1. He must remain, as he is, under the political trinity of despotism; be denied the free ballot, conferred upon him by the amendments to the United States Constitution; be forced to vote for the despotism that crushes him, already deserted by the government he fought to save, and which is constitutionally bound to protect him in his political rights and Christian privileges; or,