40 



ARKANSAS. 



two thirds of the appraised value thereof ; the 

 act shall not apply to sales of property for the 

 purchase-money thereof; and if the property 

 shall not sell at the first offering for two thirds 

 of the amount of the appraisement, then, in 

 case of personal property, another offering may 

 be made sixty days thereafter, and in case 

 of real property another offering may be made 

 twelve months thereafter, at which offerings 

 the sale shall be to the highest bidder, without 

 reference to the appraisement; and the real 

 property thus sold may bo redeemed by the 

 mortgageor at any time within one year from 

 the sale thereof, by payment of the amount for 

 which said property is sold, together with ten 

 per cent, interest thereon and cost of sale. 



By another act all lands returned as delin- 

 quent to the offices of the county clerks shall 

 there remain for a period of one year, during 

 which time they maybe redeemed by the owner 

 or person in whose name the same may be listed. 

 But if the lands are not then redeemed they 

 shall remain in said clerk's office ono year 

 longer, during which time the same shall be 

 subject to redemption by any person whatso- 

 ever who will pay the tax, penalty, and costs ; 

 and upon the payment of the same the clerk 

 shall execute and deliver a proper deed of con- 

 veyance. If at the end of this period they are 

 not redeemed, they shall be forfeited to the 

 State. 



The following preamble and resolution, in- 

 tended to respond to the investigation under- 

 taken by the so-called "Teller Committee" 

 (see CONGRESS, U. S.), was passed in the House 

 by yeas 71, nays 15 : 



Whereas, The purity and absolute freedom of the 

 ballot-box are of the utmost importance in a govern- 

 ment by the ballot ; and 



Whereas, A committee of the United States Senate 

 is now engaged upon an investigation of facts in con- 

 nection with infractions of the rights of suffrage in the 

 States of the Union, with a professed view to ascer- 

 taining a remedy ; and 



Whereas, The larger the number of facts, the more 

 valuable will be the generalization or conclusion drawn 

 from them ; and 



Whereas, During the period of reconstruction, there 

 were from 30.000 to 40,000 of the legal Democratic 

 voters of this State who were periodically deprived of 

 a free exercise of their suffrage, either by fraud or in- 

 timidation, or both : and 



Whereas, Notwithstanding many instances of out- 

 rageous fraud upon the ballot were brought in 1874 to 

 the attention of a Eepublican committee of the national 

 House of EepresentativeSj and by sworn testimony, yet 

 the distinguished presiding officer of the House lias 

 recently said upon the floor of the Senate, that he 

 doubted if it be in th'j power of the most searching 

 investigation to show that in any Southern State, dur- 

 ing the period of Eepublican control, any legal voter 

 was ever debarred from the freest exercise of his suf- 

 frage a statement which would indicate either the 

 very gross inefficiency of such committee, or as very 

 gross ignorance of their findings on the part of those 

 who believe such an assertion ; and 



Whereas, It is desirable that the committee now en- 

 gaged in a like investigation make their inquiry search- 

 ing and complete, lest its labors be obnoxious to the 

 charge of a like inefficiency, or its members to the 

 charge of a like ignorance, and its investigation there- 

 fore prove fruitless of beneficial results ; and 



Whereas, It is charged by some of the Eepublican 

 press of the North that the right of suffrage is not fully 

 enjoyed by the colored voters of Arkansas ; and 



Whereas, It is alleged by members of this body that, 

 in one county of this State, in 1870, a very large num- 

 ber of the legal voters of the county, who were Demo- 

 crats, were deprived of the free exercise of their suf- 

 frage, while at the same time a large number of ballots 

 were fraudulently voted under fictitious names taken 

 from the directory of one of our Northern cities ; that 

 in many of the counties of this State, where the white 

 population were largely in the majority, just before 

 the election of 1872 the boards of revision met in se- 

 cret and scratched from the registration lists names by 

 the hundreds of legal voters who had been legally 

 registered, and for no other known reason except that 

 it had been ascertained "they would not vote the 

 right way." 



That, indeed, many of the victims were young men 

 who had just attained to manhood, and not infre- 

 quently honorably discharged soldiers of the Federal 

 army, who were so unfortunate as to be Democrats, 

 by these boards, the members of which were generally 

 themselves candidates for lucrative offices at the same 

 election ; that on election day armed militia and depu- 

 ty-marshals surrounded the polling-places, using means 

 calculated and designed to intimidate these illegally 

 "scratched" voters from voting at the polls erected 

 under the enforcement act ; that in several instances 

 they actually arrested men for no other offense than 

 that of offering to vote at such polls ; that on the day 

 of election printed circulars, purporting to be by order 

 of the Governor, but having no signatures, were dis- 

 tributed among the election officers (all of whom were 

 Eepublicans), directing them to permit no man to vote 

 whose name was either absent or scratched from the 

 registration list, no matter how illegally. 



That as an instance and an illustration of their 

 methods, early in the morning of election day in 1872, 

 in the town or Fort Smith, the few negro voters of the 

 precinct were stationed in a line from the door of the 

 polling-place across the street, where they stood until 

 the closing of the polls, preventing all except such as 

 they chose to permit to vote, while hi a room just 

 above the polling-place were armed and drilled men, 

 under command of officers, established for the purpose 



of overcoming any resistance to these so great outrages, 

 that in the mean time deputy-marshals swarmed 



and 



about the polls in numbers almost as great as that of 

 the Eepublican voters. That the better to carry out 

 these outrages^, the judges of elections refused to allow 

 the Democratic- supervisors, appointed by the United 

 States District Court, to sit with them, ejecting one 

 after another as fast as the Judge appointed them, un- 

 til he consented to appoint the one whom they them- 

 selves designated. That at the same election one of 

 the voting-places of Crawford County was removed by 

 stealth from the usual place to a canebrake, on the 

 farm of the United States Marshal, known to the Ee- 

 publican voters, but unknown to Democrats. That 

 the marshal transferred one of his clerks to this place, 

 and made him a clerk of election. That the same clerk 

 swore before the Poland Committee that he saw the 

 ballot-box stuffed with fraudulent votes. That the 

 Democrats, in the exercise of a commendable patience 

 and forbearance, appealed to the United States District 

 Court for the enforcement of the laws made for their 

 protection, but the guilty Marshal failed to summon 

 the grand jury selected after the usual manner ; sum- 

 moning in their stead a number of his partisans and 

 fellow-conspirators, from whom to make up a grand 

 iury, in the necessary default of the regular panel. 

 That a few Democrats and honest Eepublicans, who 

 were interested in the punishment of these crimes 

 against the ballot, having an intimation of the mar- 

 shal's intended default, themselves notified the regu- 

 lar panel to appear, but upon their assembling the 

 regular panel were dismissed, which gave the Marshal 

 his opportunity of making up a new panel of the very 

 men who were more or less implicated, thus prevent- 

 ing the punishment of any guilty party. 



