From The Washington Post, November 7, 1889, pp. 1-2.
Col. William E. Sims, a representative anti-Mahone Republican of the Danville region of Virginia, returned to this city yesterday from his voting place at Chatham, Pittsylvania county. Regarding the election as he viewed it from the central point of the largest county in the State, he makes an interesting statement to The Post about Democratic election methods in that section.
Said Colonel Sims:
“I am as you know an anti-Mahone man of five years standing; have been a delegate to the national Republican conventions of 1884 and 1888 from my district, and always opposed Mahone. I have been a Blaine-Logan man, and an Alger-Harrison man, while Mahone was an Arthur and Sherman man.
“We have had a bitter personal fight and in consequence have held no personal intercourse since early in 1884. All my intimate personal friends in Virginia are with the anti-Mahone wing of the party, General Groner, Governor Cameron, Hon. John S. Wise, Hon. James D. Brady, and many others.
“In this fight I thought that as we could put no man against Mahone we ought to support him, and I have done all I could to help elect him. I had heard vague and unreliable charges of contemplated fraud, and I determined to go to my home at Chatham; and try to secure an honest and fair ballot, and see the actual state of affairs. Neither Mahone nor any friend of his asked me to do so, and I had every reason to believe that they did no wish me to help them in any way. Nevertheless I went, and I believe that what I saw will be received as the truth by Mahone and anti-Mahone men, and cannot be denied by Democrats.
“My precinct is the county seat of Pittsylvania county, and is the largest and most populous in the State, with the two parties nearly equally divided. Danville is in my county, fifteen miles from my home, and I knew that whatever frauds (if any) were contemplated in that section would emanate from Danville and Chatham, and thence radiate through the surrounding county.
“Well, this is what I saw: Soon after daylight the three Democratic judges of election met in the circuit clerk's office. I walked in and asked the clerk for the election laws. Two of the judges attacked me at once. ‘What are you doing here? We are going to bury Mahone out of sight; all our plans are arranged. You can't do anything here to-day; we intend, in the county, to give 1,500 majority and you and the whole North can't stop us.’ The third judge, who was a more violent Democrat that the other two, said nothing to me, but stepped aside with a Democratic friend and whispered earnestly for a minute; then the friend called me outside and told me that my life was in danger if I attempted to interfere with the Democratic plans. I asked him what it was. He said: ‘You know enought about POittsylvania politics to answer that question; I only want to put you on your guard.’ I thanked him and said I would try and do my duty as a Republican. A few minutes afterward I went up stairs to the voting room and the polls were opened.
“Miller Ragsdale, who is a notorious card sharp handled the ballots, and as I knew his reputation I watched him. The first colored voter offered his ballot a few minutes after the polls opened. Ragsdale, to my astonishment began to open the ballott, and as he opened it he slipped from his sleeve another Republican ballot and held up the two ballots and exclaimed: ‘the black rascal is trying to vote a folded ballot!’
“Thereupon the Democrats gathered around, with hands in their hip pockets, and said they did not intend to have Mahone methods adopted there. Ragsdale said he would open every colored man's ballot thereafter, and whenever a colored voter appeared he did open his ballot and expose it. I protested against this and told him that the law guaranteed a secret ballot. He said he knew the law and did not want any Republican advice, and continued all day to open the colored men's ballots. Runners were posted outside to warn colored men that their ballots would be known and their employment taken away if they voted the Republican ticket.
“The judges then proceeded to conduct the election according to their plan. No Republican voter was allowed to vote who had been absent thirty days in the last twelve months, although their homes and families were there, while Democrats were allowed to vote who had been absent two years. Colored voters who had always lived and voted there were told that they had been transferred to precincts twenty-five or thirty miles distant, although they protested that they had never heard of the precinct and could not get there. Many were told that their names were not registered, although they had heretofore always voted there. The recently registered colored voters were all told that they did not look like they were of age, and on their offers to prove their age they were told they would not believe a negro on oath. Some were refused votes becaused their families were in Danville, while they worked at Chatham. Others were told they they could not vote at Chatham, although their families lived there, because they worked a month in Danville.
“Colored voters who had regular transfers from other precincts in the county were denied the right to vote because their transfers were not in proper form, although they were issued by Democratic registrars. These are only a few of the many outrages perpetrated, and I wrote every one of them down, giving names and acts, and forward the list to Petersburg last night.
“To crown all the frauds of the day, they refused to allow Mr. James Carter, a Republican, to go in and witness the count, and so they counted as they pleased. I know we got 300 Republican votes at least, because the tally was carefully kept. They excluded forty-one of our voters, so our vote should have been 341 at least, but the judges only gave us 200 votes, substituted 100 Democratic votes for our votes, and announced the vote as 441 Democratic and 201 Republican.
“No fair man of either party expected a difference of ten votes, and yet they gave 240 majority against us. All the judges and clerks were Democrats and all of them the most disreputable and desperate characters in that section.
“As for Danville, I hear from the most reliable authority that the situation was the same, with the added outrage of arrests of many colored men on charges trumped up by judges, who repeated Ragsdale's double shuffle at Chatham. J.J. Verser, a Government employee at Washington, who went home to vote, was not allowed to, and barely escaped mobbing by the kindly aid of a policeman.
“At Wimbish precinct, near Danville, where the usual Republican majority counts up into the hundreds, the Democratic judges could not find the books, and allowed only forty or fifty men to vote. Armed men from North Carolina appeared to enforce the decision of the judges. At Ringgold, New Design, and in fact all over the county the plan was the same, so far as I could hear. I have heard of and seen election frauds before, but this far surpassed all my ideas on that subject. In fact, it was no election at all. It was a grand farce under the form of law.”
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