THE GOEBEL TRAGEDY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 81, 9 April 1900, Page 4

THE GOEBEL TRAGEDY.

N,Z. Times correspondent at Victoria, British Columbia, writing on February 9, gives the following particulars of a remarkable episode of which our cablegrams have furnished an outline:—

As the Miowera is prepating to sail, news reaches me of the outbreak of civil war in old Kentucky, loug since known as the home of feuds, colonels, and Bourbon whiskey. Hysterical France seems to be several points below the United States,^and this State in particular, in the matter of hyper-hysteria, in view of this outbreak. The newlyelected Governor has been assassinated, the militia are controlled by the defeated party, who refuse to leave office, cannon are unlimbered on the streets of the capitol, and armed guards surround the Capitol and Courthouse. The contest as a result of which William E. Goebel had been elected Governor of Kentucky, was a very warm one, and there was very strong personal enmity between the opposing factions. The Goebel party, though, had been victorious, and the Legislature declared Goebel elected Governor. For all that, I Taylor, the defeated Governor, refused | to give up office, and called out the militia, who are controlled by him, to assist him to remain in office. Thus matter's stood on the morning of January 30, when Governor Goebel entered the State House grounds, walking towards the Capitol, where he was to have been sworn in. He had reached the steps when suddenly some unknown assassin shot from a window on the third story, and the Governor fell to the ground. He was taken home and died four days later. He was sworn in as Governor on the day prior to his death, and his deputy, Blackstone, is now claiming office, backed by the Legislature.

To-day Goebel is being buried, and an armistice is on, as it were, until the murdered Governor is interred. To-morrow, well—many are the doleful stories sent over the wires to-day as to what to-morrow will bring forth. Many look for much bloodshed. To go back to the beginning of the present trouble which has brought civil war on Kentucky, one must look to the interference in the recent election by the Louisville and National Railway. This company was determined, at whatever cost, to defeat Goebel, and hordes of mountaineers armed with Remington rifles were brought up to the Capitol to aid them, some of whom "«re arrested for brawling and exhibiting revolvers, 1 ut pardoned at once by the de facto Governor Taylor. The shoot that killed Goebel was fired from an upper window in the Executive office, which swarmed with the armed adherents of the de facto Governor. Admission to this building was at once denied to the civil authorities when the shooting took place, and a cordon of troops was thrown around it, and there, under the pretence of being in a state of seige, the de facto Governor lias ever since held himself a voluntary prisoner, ] though surrounded by the State militia called out by himself, issuing thence proclamations disbanding the General Assembly, and transferring the seat of Government of the Commonwealth, etc. Martial law has taken the place of civil law, and it S'ems as if an armed conflct is inevitable. As a sample of the current comment in the American press on the assassination of Goebel and the threatened armed clash, which up to the present has been responsible for five lives, the Few York Herald says: :< What are we to do with such

criminals as those who have disgraced the nation with the recent tragedy in Kentucky? Hang them? Yes, hang the guilty assassins, for the more of such brutes that are hanged the freer will society be. There is no remedy for the evil that is now the curse of Kentucky and the blight of the nation. Recent happenings at Frankfort are but the climax of what has been going on in that State for years. Disregard for law has been ever growing there, but it is time that is was wiped out, even if it has to be wiped out with blood."