ELECTIONEERING AMENITIES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXI, Issue 158, 30 January 1889, Page 5

ELECTIONEERING AMENITIES.

The dullness of the election campaign in the United States is occasionally varied by vivid incidents reported from the far South- West. In the State of Arkansas there comes nearly every week graphic accounts of hot disputes settled in the old fashioned South-Western way. One of the most exciting of the campaigns is at present being conducted in St. Francis county, in the State above mentioned. Upon one morning recently seven men were shot and killed in a little place called Millbrook. The quarrel which led to the shooting grew out of a political dispute. At the local election the ballot-boxes were placed iv a schoolhouse at Millbrook. A report was circulated mysteriously in the early morning that a band of negroes intended to capture the schoolhouse and take possession of the ballot-boxes. The negroes of the South are proverbially inoffensive; they never begin quarelling with the shooting members of the white class, yet such a report of a negro uprising always brings out a company of white men, armed and ready to take advantage jf the slightest pretext for forcing a quarrel on the blacks. Thirty whites mounted guard about the schoolhouse. It appears that in this campaign there was a division among the " whites." There were found white leaders willing to lead the negroes against those who, under the plea of guarding the ballotbox, really remained there for the purpose of intimidating the " blacks," so as to prevent them from coming to cast their vote. They succeeded very well until the close of tho day, when they were attacked by a party of the Opposition, and seven of the faithful guardians of the purity of the Arkansas ballot were killed with buckshot. At Helena, Arkansas, one of the most desolate and desperate towns upon the Mississippi Eiver, there was again a political dispute not long ago which followed a debate in the Town Hall. This dispute led to a riot, and a rough who had continually interrupted the speakers was knocked down by one of the friends of law and order. The man who had received the blow drew a revolver and shot the person who struck him, killing him instantly. A general fight then followed ; revolvers were fired indiscriminately ; two men were killed, and twelve severely wounded.