ORDER NOW REIGNS

Wilmington’s New City Government Has Done its Work Well.

A REMARKABLE CHANGE

NEGROES WHO FLED TO THE WOODS THURSDAY RETURNING

ONE HUNDRED POLICE TO BE ELECTED

Military Patrol to be Dispensed With Monday – Authorities Stamp out Crusade Against Negro Leaders- Business Assuming Norm. 1 Conditions- Ex Mayor Wright Leaves

Wilmington, N. O., Nov. 12.-(Special.)-The new, city government has thoroughly established law and order. Under Mayor Waddell’s direction order has been brought out of chaos, and the military patrol is to be dispensed with Monday. Some of the Maxton troops left this afternoon, no further trouble being feared. One hundred new policemen are to be elected at once, Fifty were chosen by the board of aldermen this morning. Mr. Robert Green was selected as captain of police. The entire force will be elected and ready for service by Monday evening.

Negroes who fled to. the woods in droves Thursday, and have since been in hiding, are coming back to town, many of them in a famished condition. The authorities have put an end to the expulsion of citizens who have been prominent in negro leadership.

Many of them, however, are still. leaving of their own accord. Ex-Mayor Wright left the city today. He bought a ticket to New York city, and it is not believe that be will ever return. Others will follow.

The coroners inquest, was held over the dead negroes this morning at 10 o’clock. The jury was composed of Col. John Wilder Atkinson, E. P. Bullet, J. B. Huggins, W. M. Cumming, Elijah Lane and J. W. Yarborough.

They found in their verdict that the deceased came to their death by gun-shot wounds at the hands of unknown parties.

The new city government could not be a better one. It is headed by ex-Congressman  Waddell. The board of aldermen is composed of the most prominent and wealthiest men in the city — bankers, merchants, manufacturers, lawyers and railroad men — ten in number.

Thursday, Friday and to-day. they were often in council, passing decrees, issuing proclamations and keeping a close watch on every phase of the revolution sweeping over the city. They have gone along, nothing doubting, nothing fearing, keeping a firm hand on the pulse of the city always and promptly making front, without fear or flurry, to the wants of each hour.

Let the people of Wilmington be content with this improvised government. It is of the best. It has the implements and has the hands. Its rule will be a righteous one.

This month of November, 1806, which has been one of the memorable months in North Carolina’s history, presents it-self, so far as the city of Wilmington is concerned, under two most diverse aspects; all of black on the one side, all of brightness on the other. Whatsoever is awful to contemplate in the panic frenzy of white men who have stood all they could bear, whatsoever is great in complete purification of the city socially and politically, stand here in abrupt contrast, near by one another.

In Wilmington, for two days, panic frenzy has reigned in all its grandeur and all its hideousness, streaked with rays as of heaven on one side, girt on the other as with hell-fire.

A remarkable people they are who, in such stirring, whirling times, can go just so far and no farther-can correct the evil and stop there: who, urged on by a half-frantic populace, can keep themselves from being caught in the terrible vortices and not create more wrecks than they cure.

Conceive, if you can, in some faint degree, the tumult that has reigned there since election day. It began with a great mass-meeting of white citizens on Wednesday: a demand that a negro paper be suppressed and the editor banished. This infuriated the negroes, more especially as the demand was accompanied by another demand that the city officials, chosen by the negroes, at once, resign. The two could but go together

It was a momentous day in Wilmington history. And as night settled down there was execration on the part of the negroes, indignation of the part of the whites and determination among all. Just such a feeling, methinks, as must have brooded over Paris the night before the French Revolution broke in its fury.

In this Wilmington upheaval, just as in Paris, there was a frantic crowding toward town-halls, dethroning of those who misrule, a banishment of those who are obnoxious and a destruction of places. hated for their association, But unlike the French Revolution everything was done in Wilmington in due form and strictly in accordance with law. All of those concerned in it were lovers of order and justice.

Note in the very wording of the resolutions passed at the mass meeting Wednesday, a tendency to improvising the committee appointed into an organization for the proper government of the city. It was to have and delegate authority when the old order was exploded. Even in the spirit-stirring speeches made at the meeting there was always that prophetic sense looking toward the coming new government. They, knew that with the passing of these resolutions the scepter in this city would pass from Radicals once and always.

Thursday morning dawned ominously. No reply came to the demand that the Record be removed from the city and its editor banished. Out came the deadly Winchester that so quickly snuffs out human life. In columns of fours men march to the Record office and destroy the outfit of the paper. They do their work only too well. The building is accidentally fired and now stands a charred and blackened ruin.

While this is going on the negroes are sulking on the street corners.

Fortunately they had few arms, but such as they had they tried to use. Advice is useless now. The issue is drawing on and the doubtful hour, with its pain and blind struggle, is to bring forth its certainty never to be abolished.

The office was burned, as I have said, in the forenoon, from 9 to 11 o’clock. An hour later, people following their affairs in the northern part of the city. were startled by the echo of a pistol shot. It was followed by a volley from Winchesters.

Before this firing had ceased, half a dozen negroes were biting the dust in

death, three white men were wounded and three times as many negroes.

Much to be regretted is this bloodshed. Surely few things in the history of carnage are more painful, and yet it had to be done. Death only could settle the score and bring peace. That ineffaceable red streak, flickering balefully in Wilmington’s history today had become a necessity. And who can help the inevitable? All North Carolina was interested in this conflict. That first pistol shot was heard reverberating to the four corners of the State, and through all hearts. For blood is thicker than water, and there is sympathy among men. Indeed mankind is like tuned strings strike one and all will sound in infinite concordance.

Negro rule is at an end in North Carolina forever. The events of the past

week in Wilmington and elsewhere place that fact beyond all question.

With the approach of night the dread and horror of the situation increased and extra precautions  were taken until the city became a formidable fortress. The military remained on duty and 400 special policemen were sworn in. About 200 men who came from Fayetteville, Goldsboro and other places were also put on duty. Besides, the citizens, heavily armed, patrolled each block.

With them “Ready” was the word. They carried loaded guns upon their shoulders or loaded pistols in their pockets. The strongest passions drove then on, and at the same time restrained them from excesses —love, hatred, vengeful sorrow, patriotic determination.

The negroes now thoroughly subdued and frightened, few of them ventured forth. But every road leading from Wilmington was filled with them. They were loaded with packs and bundles, fleeing in the darkness to make their home elsewhere.

Now and then, daring the night, there were alarms and reports of men killed in various parts of the city. Fortunately, however, all these rumors proved untrue and nothing more

serious than the wounding of one or two negroes who rashly refused to halt when called on by the guard resulted,

Then there was a fruitless attempt to lynch some negroes in jail and the putting of the rope around the neck of G.Z. French at the station as he was being seat away.

In this manner wanes the slow night and threat, uncertainty and bloodshed. On every block, the steady, tramp of guards is heard. As the yellow lamplight pales in the gray morning, the negroes failed to re-appear on the streets and it was evident that the worst of the trouble was over.

I have seen no mote grewsome sight than was that presented the morning after the fight. It was in a little undertaking establishment, owned by a negro — a rickety shanty on Second street. Three men were at work making rude pine coffins. On the bare floor, stretch six dead negroes. Their stark bodies and staring faces tell the story of the previous day. They were dressed in their working clothes, just as they were shot down. Around them stood negro women with sad faces. There were no men present, for the men feared to leave their houses.

I could but feel pity for these poor, deluded creatures, and a certain, amount of honor for them. No doubt they believed they were right. White leaders had told then so. No martyrs were ye, and yet almost more. They were no brave men, these leaders of your who incited you to murder and deeds of lawlessness, and they forsook you in your hour of need. Ye were but valuable to them as cat’s paws and for your poor votes.

They deserved death rather than you.

Oh, ye hapless negroes, why was there no order from your leaders not to begin this fight? And why, after screwing your courage up to desperate defiance, did they in trembling cowardice seek cover for themselves behind barred doors? The lawless lesson they taught, you hare learned too well. Nothing but death will cause insurrection to hear and heed. You have been betrayed to your death and your betrayers have escaped.

But have they?

On Friday came events no less important and quite as momentous as the conflict of Thursday. A dozen of the leaders, white and black, were deported, a promise being exacted from them to leave the State and never return again

These men had long been marked. Now they must run for their lives. Their hour had come. Some went in tears some with looks of defiance of their faces. “Gizzard” Z. French, a carpetbagger, was the first one chosen. Right nimbly did he hobble out when the visiting committee told h I’m the object of their call. Trial Justice Bunting was snatched from his negro wife, Policeman Gilbert from his comfortable home and Charles McAllister from his friends, Chief of Police Melton’s wife and five children could not save him. The misdeeds of these men had become notorious and their sight unbearable.

The jails opened and released half a dozen negro prisoners — leaders and inciters of riot, all of them — on condition that they would leave the State; negro barbers and lawyers were advised to take a trip for their health.

All these people were followed to the station by great crowd of people. Soldiers marched on either side to prevent violence. As they passed along there arose from the sidewalks an angry murmur, far-heard like the ocean tide; but there was no violence offered by the eddying currents of on-lookers, rolling hither and thither unarmed but not voiceless.

Now they have reached the station with Gizzard French. For a moment the crowd is suddenly struck silent. Not a man stirred . Then like a trumpet a voice piped out, “Hang him.” It was like a live fire-brand. Pandemonium broke loose. A roar of approval went up from the crowd. The soldiers borne down by the human billows pressing upon them, found themselves unable to longer protect their prisoner. Someone threw a rope over his head and but for the timely interference of several influential citizens Gizzard French would now be a corpse.

And after it all one feels like paraphrasing Carlyle, when writing of France:

Ye have roused her, then, ye Radicals and Negrophilists; Wilmington is roused. Long have ye been torturing this poor city, shaking over her your ferules of taunt and threat and insult; it is long that ye have pricked and filliped and affrighted her, there as she sat helpless in the dead cements of negro rule — negroes and carpet-baggers gathering in on her from all sections with their conspiracies and plottings, their invading and truculent bullyings; — and low, now ye have pricked her to the quick, and she is up and her blood is up. The dead cements are rent into cobwebs, and she grounds you in that terrible strength of () which no man has measured which goes down to Madness and Tophet; She now how ye will deal with her.

Men will bear much but mind that we goad them not too far. For mature green as she looks, rests everywhere on dread foundations were we further down.

Here is the cause of all bloodshed in Wilmington. It is an editorial published over a month ago in the Daily Record, a negro paper edited. By Alex Manly, a colored man;

“We suggest that the whites guard their women more closely, thus giving no opportunity for the human fiend, be he white or black. You leave your goods out of doors and then complain because they are taken away.

“Poor white men are careless in the matter of protecting their women, especially on farms. They are careless of their conduct towards them, and our experience among the poor white people in the country teaches that the women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than are the white men with colored women. Meetings of this kind go on for some time until their woman’s infatuation on the man’s boldness brings attention to them and the man is lynched.

“Every negro lynched is called a ‘big, burly, black brute,’ when in fact many of those who have has been dealt with had white men for their fathers and were not only not black and burly, but were sufficiently attractive for white girls of culture and refinement to fall in love with them, as is well known to ().”

Six dead and three mortally wounded have paid for this editorial. The base slander against the white women of North Carolina has been wiped out in blood. The office in which the libel was written stands a charred ruin; the press upon which it was printed is wrecked and broken, and the man who penned the dying words is an outcast upon the face of the earth, fleeing from that fate which his words would bring him in North Carolina.

They were written two months ago the midst of a heated political campaign in which the race question was the issue. In some other communities the expression of such sentiments would have caused a lynching, but Wilmington people are conservative and long-suffering. They bided their time.

“After the election,” they said.

The election came Tuesday, Wednesday afternoon at 3 o’clock a largely attended mass meeting of business men that was held in the court house and resolutions were passed making an emphatic demand that the editor of the Recent leave the city within twenty four hours and immediately remove his paint.

He was given until 7:30 next morning to indicate his willingness to do this, a committee of twenty-five leading citizens, headed by Col. A.M. Waddell, was appointed to see that the provisions of the resolution in regard to the removal of the negro paper were carried out.

Ne reply is received next morning to a request to the colored minister and others to use their influence in having the Record ssuspended, its fixture moved and the editor leave the city. True to their word the office and fixtures were destroyed by the committee and Manly searched for but not found.

This maddened the negroes and they assembled in numbers on one of the street corners and one of them fired his pistols at the white men as they returned home. The whites returned the fire with deadly effect. Two negroes fell dead in their tracks and others were injured.

Before the fighting on the street ceased, three others were killed and more wounded. Two white men were wounded slightly. As they ran through the streets one of the negroes shot. William Mayo, a young white man, as he stood in his door, probably fatally wounded him.

The negro was followed to his house and thirteen bullets shot into him. He lived through till Friday morning, where he dies, the sixth victim of the race was in Wilmington.

FRED L. MERRITT