528 



MISSISSIPPI. 



MISSOURI. 



tide 4 of the Constitution, and reads as fol- 

 lows: 



The Legislature shall meet at the seat of Govern- 

 ment, on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in 

 January, in the year A. D. 1878, and biennially there- 

 after, uuless sooner convened by the Governor. 



The time and place of meeting may be altered by 

 law. 



These amendments were first proposed by 

 the Legislature of 1876, and approved and sub- 

 mitted to the people by the Legislature of 

 1877. 



Considerable excitement was caused through- 

 out the country by the attack of a mob upon 

 Judge W. W. Chisolm, at De Kalb, in Kemper 

 County, on the 29th of April. There had been 

 a political and personal feud of long standing 

 between Judge Chisolm and certain of his as- 

 sociates and an opposing faction headed by 

 John W. Gully. It had broken out in exhibi- 

 tions of personal violence more than once, and 

 on the 26th of April Gully was waylaid and 

 murdered by some unknown person. His 

 friends believed that Chisolm and his associates 

 had been instrumental in procuring his death, 

 and warrants were obtained on the evidence 

 of two negroes for the arrest of W. W. Chis- 

 olm, J. P. Gilmer, Charles Rosenbaum, and 

 two men by the name of Hopper. The arrest 

 of Chisolm and the Hoppers was made on the 

 morning of April 29th, and at that time a mob 

 of about 200 men entered the village of De 

 Kalb. They insisted that Chisolm, who was 

 in his own house in the custody of the sheriff, 

 be lodged in the jail, and his wife, daughter 

 Cornelia, and son John, a mere boy, accom- 

 panied him. When Gilmer and Rosenbaum 

 entered the village in charge of a deputy sher- 

 iff, they were set upon by the mob and the 

 former was killed. An attack was afterward 

 made on the jail, during which Judge Chisolm 

 and his daughter received wounds, which 

 proved fatal, and the boy and a man named 

 McClellan, one of the guards, were killed. The 

 deed was very generally condemned, although 

 the local feeling seems to have been strongly 

 on the side of the Gully party. Governor 

 Stone visited the locality a few days after the 

 tragic event, and found everything quiet. He 

 visited the judge of the district and requested 

 him to hold a special term of the circuit court 

 in Kemper County for the purpose of making 

 a thorough judicial investigation. In a letter 

 on the subject, written May 18th, he said : 



No one justifies the act by which Judge Chisolrn 

 lost his life. Everything that is possible shall be 

 done to arrest and punish the guilty parties. I do 

 not hope to silence the misrepresentations of men 

 who are making political capital out of the unfortu- 

 nate affair. The South has been too long a victim 

 of misrepresentation for your people to become will- 

 ing suddenly to hear both sides before condemning. 

 The recent telegrams and articles that have ap- 

 peared in Northern papers are based solely upon my 

 refusal to consent to an invasion of Kemper County 

 by a body of men from other counties. The folly 

 of consenting to such a proposition, when no trouble 

 was apprehended, must be apparent to every reason- 

 ble person. 



No special term of the court was held, but 

 in September the grand jury of the county 

 found indictments against 31 persons as al- 

 leged participants in the assassination, six as 

 principals and 25 as accessories. No trials had 

 taken place before the end of the year. 



An organization of citizens "for the sup- 

 pression of lawlessness " was formed in Amite 

 County in December, and a vigilance commit- 

 tee was appointed. Among the "outrages" 

 which it avowed its determination to "put 

 down," were " killing, burning, whipping, or- 

 dering off of plantations, intimidating, or other- 

 wise destroying the material interests and civil 

 rights of any person, of any color, age, sex, or 

 condition." Speaking of complaints of law- 

 lessness in "two or three of the Southwestern 

 counties of the State," the Governor, in his- 

 message to the Legislature of 1878, said : 



The better class of the citizens who are greatly 

 in the majority in these counties are opposed to 

 lawlessness, but are powerless to prevent it in many 

 instances. The lawless persons operate secretly, 

 and at night ; and before their deeds have become 

 known to those who might pursue them and bring 

 them to justice, they have dispersed, and no trace 

 of them can be found. These persons generally act 

 in sparsely settled communities. Although in the 

 minority, and composed mostly of irresponsible per- 

 sons, yet these lawless elements should, be made to 

 feel the strong arm of the Government, and the 

 guilty parties should be punished with the utmost 

 severity. A few evil, lawless men can bring re- 

 proach upon the Government, and cause more harm 

 to its reputation than the entire law-abiding element 

 can repair. I ask the attention of the Legislature to 

 the complaints from the localities mentioned, and 

 suggest rigorous measures to bring the lawless per- 

 sons to a sense of their duties. The ordinary reme- 

 dies have, thus far, been inadequate to meet the 

 emergency. It is due, not only to the State's fair 

 name, but to the people in the immediate neigh- 

 borhoods who necessarily suffer in person and prop- 

 erty that the lawless bands be broken up, and that 

 such punishment be administered as will force them 

 hereafter to obey the laws and deport themselves as 

 good citizens. 



MISSOURI. A census was taken in 1876 

 by the county assessors, under a law passed in 

 1875, except for the county of St. Louis, where 

 the assessor declined to act, on the ground that 

 the compensation provided for was inadequate. 

 The returns were made in April of this year, 

 so that the general result was announced to 

 the Legislature, by the Secretary of State, in 

 the following words: "The enumeration was 

 carefully and correctly taken, except in a few 

 of the counties. In these the difference be- 

 tween the returns and the actual population 

 may be estimated at 10,000 less than the re- 

 turns show. The population of the 113 coun- 

 ties returned is 1,547,030, to which add the 

 deficit of 10,000 and 33,000, the estimated pop- 

 ulation of St. Louis County, thus making the 

 population of the State, outside the city of St. 

 Louis. 1,590.030. Assuming the population of 

 the city of St. Louis to be not less than 450,- 

 000, or more than 500,000, the total population 

 of the State in August, 1876, was between 

 2,050,000 and 2,100,000." Calculations based 



