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with head-quarters at Knoxville. He operated with his organization or command in East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, Northern Georgia, and South Carolina.

He was captured seven times, and was sentenced to be shot at Salisbury, N. C., in 1862. He scaled the walls of the prison, however, and though shot through the body, escaped. In 1863 he was captured by Wheeler, and was sentenced to be hung at Ashville, N. C. Again he escaped.

During these eight years of service he belonged to eight different Confederate regiments, serving a part of the time as a private, and part of the time as a commissioned officer, and gaining much valuable information. He, of course, had many adventures, and came out with many wounds. He was known then as Charlie Davis, and hundreds of Union officers, piloted by him to the Union lines, rescued by his command from rebel guards or prisons, have good cause to remember him with grateful feelings.

After the war Capt. Davis (Boone) came North, but went to South Carolina in 1869 to organize the detective force of the state. It becoming evident that there was a secret organization of rebel sympathizers, against which the legitimate government could make little headway, Capt. Boone disappeared from South Carolina and appeared in Georgia as a cotton buyer from North Carolina, rebel in sympathy, and violent in his talk against the tyranny of the Federal government. He joined the order then

known as the White Brotherhood, whose declared object was the protection of the widows and orphans of deceased rebel soldiers, and whose platform included the banding together of all sympathizers of the Lost Cause for the advancement of personal and political interest. The society, which it was said had organized in Washington, numbered at that time 834,000 members, including all the rebel sympathizers in the South-merchants, lawyers, farmers, traders, mechanics. Hostility to negroes showed itself in violence and outrage, and even the leaders of the organization admitted that in this way only could they intimidate the blacks. Possessing himself of all the signs, passwords, etc., Capt. Boone returned to South Carolina to put the denials of such an or-ganization in that state to the test. He traveled extensively, was recognized everywhere as a member of the order, and saw all their plans and aims from behind the scenes. The society adopted the name Ku-Klux to frighten the negroes, and the reckless men of the order perpetrated outrages that were never mentioned in print. During the years of '69 and '70, ninety-three cold blooded murders were perpetrated in South Carolina alone. Hundreds of negroes and many white men were brutally whipped and otherwise abused. At Lawrence court-house, eighteen men were killed in one day, and the struggle at Newberry was what would have been a wholesale slaughter of Union men, had not Captain Boone managed to have troops put in an opportune appear

ance.

In all his observations he collected facts, names, dates. He thoroughly understood the animus of the order, and understood their mode of action. Finally, when his report to the state officers had caused action, the signs and passwords of the order were changed, and suspicion being directed against himself, his usefulness ceased.

His statements made under oath before the investigating committee at Washington and substantiated by the records and by the circumstances of the many cases, and by the testimony of others eminently hostile to him, is a strange chapter in the history of the Southern States. The whole thing in a nutshell is, that the outrages have not been exaggerated, but on the contrary that not one-half have been reported, and that when reported many of the acts lost something of their brutality because of the absence of the particulars that could not be made public in a newspaper.

The Government did not act in the Ku-Klux business a moment too soon. The Government would have been criminal had it delayed longer. The Government acted with the facts as learned by scores of men like Captain Boone, and as coming in the stories of thousands of persecuted citizens, before its officers, not trusting alone to the excited narrative of refugees. And the time will come when all good men, both North and South, will commend this action of the Government as one of its best deeds.-Toledo Blade.

THE MUSTERING.

BY MRS. SARAH S. SOCWELL.

Ho! Freemen of the loyal North, come to the rescue now-
See! basely trampled in the dust, our glorious flag lies low!
That flag which led our fathers on to victory and fame-
Will ye stand tamely by and see that banner brought to shame?
No! like the rushing tempest's roar I hear the answer come,
From princely hall, from homestead fair, from lowly cottage

home;

And, borne on every breeze, I hear, from mountain, plain, and glen,

The stirring drum and bugle call, and tramp of armed men.

The cry hath reached the lake-gemmed wilds and rugged shores of Maine

The woodman drops his gleaming ax-the fisher leaves his seine;

And from New Hampshire's hills and vales pours down a gallant band,

Who, firm as their own granite rocks, beneath our flag will stand.

Old Massachusetts gladly sends the sons whose noble sires
At Lexington and Bunker Hill first kindled Freedom's fires;
And from Connecticut's fair vales-Rhode Island's sea-girt
shore,

Comes forth a hardy band to strike for Liberty once more.

Vermont's green mountain peaks have caught spirit-stirring

tones;

And prompt and dauntless, as of yore, pour down her sturdy

sons;

New York remembers Arnold now, when traitors claim the

sway,

And her brave sons by thousands come to mingle in the fray.

Staid Pennsylvania rises, majestic in her might,

And like a solid bulwark turns from Freedom's soil the fight; New Jersey, with her gallant Blues, is promptly in the field— The soil made sacred with her blood, she'll be the last to yield.

And Delaware keeps, still unquenched, her sacred altar fires, Her children still remember the lessons of their sires.

The Maryland line has not yet lost its ancient patriot pride, Though treason, with unblushing front, holds back the swelling tide.

And from the young, but mighty West, comes back a quick reply

“Beneath our flag we'll conquer, or beneath it we will die;" Along her noble rivers, o'er all her verdant plains,

I hear the drum's deep clangor, the march of armed trains.
The Freedom-loving Germans, remembering Fatherland,
For Liberty and Union have taken valiant stand;
And Erin's quivering harpstrings thrill with a wild refrain,
As forth her sturdy children come to swell the thronging train.
God bless the noble patriots, who are gathering in their might,
The Lord of Hosts shall guard them in Freedom's holy fight;
Ne'er may the gleaming sword be sheathed till treason finds

its grave,

And over our whole country our good old flag shall wave.
La Prairie Center, Marshall Co., Illinois.

THE INDIANA ELECTION CASES.

The verdict of guilty against Coy and Bernhamer, charged with forgery of election returns in Indianapolis, is another voice proclaiming that, in the northern tier of states, at any rate, votes must be cast as the voters wish, and must be counted as they were cast. Crimes against the purity of elections are of the most heinous nature. By the quickened conscience of the American people they are regarded as not subject to pleas in mitigation of punishment; they are held to be not only unjustifiable but unpardonable. They proceed from the meanest motives, are executed by

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