The Condition of Georgia.
By J. H. Caldwell
FROM an article by J. H. Caldwell to the N. Y. Methodist, we take the following paragraphs:— ASSASSINATION OF HON. G. W. ASHBURN.
On Saturday, March 28, a Republican mass meeting was held in the Court House square. There were two thousand or more persons in attendance. Several speeches were delivered, State nominations were confirmed, and county nominations made. Col. Ashburn was chairman of the nominating committee. On Sunday afternoon, I preached to two or three thousand people assembled in the Court House square. The principal Union men were present. Dr. Merrill sat near me, and wept like a child. Col. Ashburn stood up behind me on the stand, looking with his severe and rugged features at me, and at times his eyes were moistened with tears. On Monday night, we went to Temperance Hall to hear Rev. H. M. Turner, Superintendent of the African M. E. Church. He made a long and able speech in favor of the ratification of the new constitution. The meeting broke up about eleven o'clock. About two o'clock, Mr. Parker came into my room, woke me up, and informed me that Col. Ashburn had just been murdered in his room. The following334facts connected with the terrible murder were elicited on Tuesday before the jury of inquest. Between twelve and one o'clock, a number of persons, supposed to be between thirty and forty, surrounded the house where Col. Ashburn lived, broke down the doors, and five of them entered his room, and shot him. He received several balls into his body—two fatal shots in the head. Although he had a pistol, yet when he found that he was overpowered, and that the shedding of the blood of any of his assistants would be useless, he boldly confronted his murderers, and received their fire into his mouth and forehead. Thus he died, a hero and a martyr. His loyal countrymen will long remember his services in the cause of patriotism, liberty, and humanity. He was a member of the late Convention, and labored with much zeal and earnestness, and with complete success, to secure the passage of an ordinance recommending the release of all the enemies of reconstruction from all political disabilities. The assassins were all well-dressed citizens of Columbus, wearing masks. No one in this part of the country, who is acquainted with the doings of this infamous secret order, which certain secessionists have instituted, can for a moment doubt that Ashburn was assassinated by the members of that “Klan.” The public has been made acquainted with the atrocious deeds perpetrated by the members of the order in Tennessee. It has been but a few weeks since the order first made, by its mystic signs, unmeaning orders, and cabalistic letters, its appearance in Georgia. But it has inaugurated its bloody work here. General Meade has issued a stringent order (No. 51), requiring all military and civil authorities to be vigilant in ferreting out, and bringing to punishment, the members of this order who may be concerned in any acts of violence, or in any measures calculated to intimidate any one in the exercise of his political rights. But civil authorities who are known enemies to reconstruction will not be apt to be very vigilant in searching for persons who are carrying out their own principles, and the military are only stationed at a few prominent places. These midnight prowlers go unmolested about every town and village in the State, marking their K. K. K. on gates, palings, doors, and walls, hanging up their written, painted, or printed placards containing senseless gibberish, skeletons, and coffins, and breathing out threatenings and slaughter against Union men and the avowed advocates of the new constitution. I am now writing in one of the villages of Western Georgia, in my room at a hotel kept by a well-known Union man and a reconstructionist. He was several times threatened with hanging during the war. He is yet alive, however, but just now in dread of his life. He has an invalid daughter, with whom some of the family have to sit up all night. After midnight, a few nights ago, the “Ku Klux Klan” made a visit to his premises, while yet they could see the dim light through the lattice of the window to the chamber of the afflicted daughter. The outraged father, hearing the noise, sallied forth with his gun, but the dastardly wretches fled at his approach; not, however, until they had nailed his coffin and skeleton, with their inevitable “K. K. K.,” upon his wall. To what class they belong, it is not difficult to conceive, if we remember the testimony of the witnesses in regard to the clothing of Ashburn's murderers; if we mark the exultant tone of the disloyal press in noticing them and their deeds; and, especially, if we listen to the drift of the conversation in “respectable” circles concerning them. You take your station in company with three or four of the most clever-looking citizens of any of our country villages; presently, a well-dressed, portly, intelligent, old gentleman joins your little company. He is Dr. A., a practicing physician, Colonel B., a respectable lawyer, or Mr. C., who lives at his ease in town, on the income of one of the best plantations in the county. But he is a “true Southern man,” and intensely opposed to reconstruction, “Radicals,” “scalawags,” “Yankee carpet-baggers,” and negro suffrage. In fact, these expressions, with a bitter imprecation generally prefixed, interlard his whole conversation. He begins by referring to the famous Ku Klux, if he sees any one present whom he suspects of a design to vote for “ratification.” He assumes an air of seriousness, and speaks in affectedly low and solemn accents: “Who are they? What do they mean? It is very mysterious! Have you not heard what they have done in such and such places? It is really supernatural. I do not know what to think of them; but they are certainly doing some marvelous things.” In this style of affected mystery, such men will talk, while every one who listens, knows who they are, knows that he knows who they are, and that he knows that he is one of them. He knows that they are bound together with a solemn oath to terrify the superstitious negroes, to annoy and harass the wives and children of Union men, and utterly to crush down, if not brutally murder, leading spirits engaged in the great work of reformation. All this to defeat the Constitution made by “that unlawful, negro, Radical Convention.” The effect of this terrorism is beginning to be felt. Thousands of whites, especially the poor men who were forced to fight the battles of the slaveholders against their flag and country—men who are sighing for peace, and longing to see the day when this turmoil and strife shall cease—are struck dumb. They are afraid to open their mouths. They know and dread the men who are sworn to persecute and oppress them, if they vote as they please. Some of the more active Union leaders are in dread of their lives. They know not what hour of the night they may be murdered in their beds. Their families are in continual terror. Their existence is torment, and they know not which way to turn for relief or safety. The colored population are becoming greatly demoralized. They are constantly annoyed by horrible tales of the cruel deeds of the mysterious Ku Klux, who is represented to them as a grim, ghostly giant, who flies through the air by night, and threatens to destroy every negro who votes for the “Radicals.” If they continue thus to agitate and alarm this class of people till the day of election, at the same time threatening them with discharge from service, if they vote for any but Democrats, it is impossible to conjecture what the result may be. But, if every one is allowed the free exercise of his own choice in voting, there is no doubt that the Constitution will be ratified, and the full Republican ticket elected. Since I left Columbus, Mr. Parker has written me that he has been constrained to leave that place. The times became so dangerous that his best Union friends advised him to this course. He has written me full particulars, which I do not deem fit, at this juncture, to publish. He will probably return after the election. If it secure the triumph of the right; if not, it may not be safe for him to do so. A sweet-spirited, deeply pious, and inoffensive Christian minister, with a small, but respectable, flock under his charge, has been compelled to flee from a Christian city in free America, as if it were a land of savages, under the apprehension of personal violence—from a city so lately stained with the blood of one of the martyrs of liberty!