make a desperate charge to carry the election and place himself in
office, even if the streets of the old city flow with blood. Yea,
although the usual state election time is some distance off, plans have
been already secretly perfected not only to carry the election by the
Democrats, but to reduce the Negro majorities by banishment,
intimidation and murder.

Senator ----, by invitation, had visited the state, and advised the
carrying of the election with the shotgun, and had offered the loan of
five hundred guns from South Carolina. Merchants, most of them in
Wilmington, had promised to discharge all colored help who showed a
disposition to vote, and had also subscribed to a fund for the purpose
of purchasing powder, guns and dynamite. A railroad company operating
into the city had subscribed five hundred guns. Stump orators had
secured the aid of the poor whites both in the city and rural districts
by promising them that by assisting to kill and chase the Negro from the
city, the property owned by the colored citizens would be turned over to
them. This was the work of hungry politicians who, to get office told an
infamous lie, and were ready to deluge a city in blood just to get into
office. Certain Negroes and white men had been listed for slaughter and
banishment. Negro men and women who had had any difficulty in which they
had gotten the best of a white person before the courts or otherwise,
for even ten years back, were to be killed or driven from the city.
Those who owned houses in white neighborhoods were to be driven out and
their property taken. All this was being done quietly while the old city
rested peacefully upon this smouldering volcano. The Negro, unaware of
the doom that awaited him, went quietly about his work; but there were a
few white men in the city who, although Southerners by birth and
education, did not coincide with the methods adopted for the securing
of white supremacy. Among these was Mr. Gideon who could not be
persuaded to assist in such a movement, even in the minutest way. A few
mornings previous to the opening of my story, there had appeared in the
columns of a small Negro journal edited in Wilmington, a short article
which had been interpreted as an intent to slander white women. This had
thrown the city into a fever of excitement, and dire threats had been
made against the editor, and the flocking of the colored people to his
aid had made the whites that much more bitter toward Negroe