Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/361

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be heard and the meeting adjourned without coming to any effectual conclusion.

The majority of the people are under such a feeling having been foiled, deceived, and deserted by the men whom they have elevated for honor, that they now have inscribed upon their banners:

"Judge Green may try with might and main, But he'll never beat Daniel H. Chamberlain."

Republican.

Matters in Marion

Freaks of a Jack-in-Office—The Proceedings of the District Conference

Correspondence of the News and Courier

Marion, S. C., July 20, 1874.

One W. A. Hayne, of nondescript complexion and Radical persuasion, whose frantic speeches and other wild performances during a political canvass several years ago procured him the sobriquet of "Notoriety," is just now lording over our unhappy people in the guise of a United States commissioner. In this potential capacity he has commenced active operations against those who he or his ebon emissaries choose to suspect of transgressing the internal revenue law. Farmers who may have been in the habit of purchasing small quantities of tobacco just as they purchase other supplies for the use of the laborers on their plantations, have all at once become victims of vindictive prosecutions—the officers who make the arrests, and the over-zealous witnesses for the government, all being negroes. It is said that a farmer must not buy tobacco for his hands without having obtained a regular license therefor. While this may or may not be true, it seems to be certain that the warlike commissioner is enforcing the decision not so much in the spirit of the law, which he pretends to vindicate, as with a malicious propensity to annoy his political opponents. He was not gracious enough to consider that our farmers were without perhaps a single exception, ignorant of the existence of so stringent a ruling, (if, indeed, it does exist,) and he did not see the propriety of advertising it for the benefit of those whose character would belie the suspicion of an intention to defraud the revenue. It may be that "Notoriety Hayne," by thus flaunting in our faces his puissant commission, means to enhance his consequence as a prospective