ment of the county board of canvassers, and that this was the only legal data necessary, and the 24th section of the act of 1868 is relied upon as sustaining that position. Under the act of 1868 the precinct managers delivered the boxes containing the ballots and the poll-lists to the county board of canvassers within three days after the election, and this board counted them upon the following Tuesday and made up their statements, transmitting them by mail, one each to the governor, comptroller, and secretary of State.

In view of a contest before the House these provisions became the subject of severe animadversions, and in 1872 an act was passed providing that all elections shall be regulated and conducted according to the rules, principles, and provisions therein and "all conflicting" acts are repealed.

Now the principal provisions of this law are:

1st. That the ballots shall be counted by the precinct managers as soon as the polls are closed, and that the boxes containing the ballots shall be sent to the county board; and, 2d, that a statement of the county board of canvassers should be sent by a special messenger, with the returns, poll-lists, and all papers appertaining to the election, addressed to the governor and secretary of state. Under the law of 1868 the bal lots were liable to be tampered with after the polls closed and during the interval before they were counted, and the county board of canvassers was wholly without check upon their statement.

The act of 1872 takes from the county board the counting of the votes and devolves that duty upon the precinct managers, and requires that it be done publicly at the closing of the polls. It also places a check upon the aggregated statement of the county board by requiring that the returns, poll-lists, and all papers appertaining to the election be sent by a special messenger, addressed to the governor and secretary of state. To use the terms of the act itself, the "principle" contained in this "provision" is a check upon the opportunity of the county board to perpetrate fraud, and all acts in any way conflicting with the rules, principles, and provisions are repealed. It is unquestionable that if the State board is to make up its statement of the vote of the district solely upon the statements of the county boards, aggregating the votes of each of the counties, there is no check whatever upon the statements of the county boards, and the "rules and principles " are defeated, and there is no purpose whatever in sending by a special messenger "the returns, poll-lists, and all papers appertaining to the election" to the governor and secretary of state. This provision is a part of a remedial statute, and is to be liberally construed, and all acts "in any way conflicting with its rules, principles, and provisions" are repealed. By no canon or rule of construction can this provision of the remedial amendatory act be thrown away.

But if the section 24 of the act of 1868 is not thereby repealed, the two acts must be construed in pari materia, and the State board of canvassers should make up their statement of the vote of the district from the certified copies of the statements made by the board of county canvassers, and from the precinct "returns, poll-lists, and all papers appertaining to the election."

These, then, become together the data upon which the State board of canvassers make up their statement whereon the certificate is based. If it is based upon anything else, or only upon a portion of the data prescribed by law, it is without legal validity as regards the election of a member of Congress; and this, wholly independently of the ques tion as to whether this is done fraudulently, ignorantly, or is a mere casus omissus.

The party relying upon such a certificate must prove his vote aliunde. In this case there is a peculiar and most forcible illustration of the wisdom of this requirement that the precinct return and poll-list shall accompany the statement of the board of county canvassers, for this board has no judicial authority. This is admitted by counsel on both sides. Yet in two counties they have assumed to exercise judical powers in throwing out entire boxes and in not counting the vote polled for Congressman at others, and without any pretense of cause. And in consequence of the failure of the county boards of these counties to send to the governor and secretary of state the precinct returns and poll-lists, as they are specifically required to do by law, the official data is wanting upon which to add the vote at these several boxes. In the three counties of Edgefield, Colleton, and Barnwell the legal data by which the frauds of county boards of canvassers is intended to be detected and corrected, and which forms an important part of the basis on which the member's certificate of election is based, has been deliberately withheld and suppressed. There is no official data by which to fix the vote at polls which have been fraudulently omitted from the count, in contravention of the plain letter of the statute, and the construction placed thereon for years past by the court of last resort in that State. And, on the other hand, there are polls which should be rejected from the count for gross illegalities and fraud in the management thereof, and others for violence and intimidation; but, in consequence of the illegal suppression of the data required by law, it is impossible to ascertain how these polls were counted in the statement as made up by the State board from the aggregate furnished by these three county boards.

The principle is correct and sound, and is well settled, that when the reliability of the official statement is destroyed, whether for fraud, for ignorant neglect of legal duty, or because made up from insufficient, illegal, or fraudulent data, it must be disregarded as evidence. But the vote of the electors is not lost because the pretended statement of it is defective, illegal, and unreliable, but it may be proven aliunde.

It is clearly established that the State board had not "the precinct returns, poll lists, and all other papers appertaining to the election" before it at the time it made up its statement on which the certificate of election was given to contestee; and it is equally well established that that board made up its statement merely from the aggregated statement of the county board, without any of the legal data with which to correct their errors or detect their frauds. It is strenuously claimed for the contestant that these returns, poll-lists, &c., were essential factors, and that the want of them destroyed the validity of the statement of the State board absolutely, whilst for the contestee it is urged that the law of 1868 remains unchanged as to the State board.

The committee has not deemed it necessary to decide this legal question, as there are other questions, both of law and fact, which enter into the case, and, as they think, control it.

The contestant, however, claims that if all three of these counties are not rejected for the reason above contended for by him, that still the county of Edgefield must be for another reason, viz, that by reason of violence, intimidation, and fraud practiced at the various precincts of this county the legal vote has not been and cannot be ascertained. On this proposition the committee has examined the record most carefully. Whilst your committee would be glad to know that this county stood alone in this respect, it is true that the spirit of violence and lawlessH. Mis. 35-28

ness was rife throughout five counties in this district, everywhere manifesting a fixed purpose to prevent the colored people from voting in the first place, and then to avoid a fair and honest count of the vote which had been polled. In the excesses to accomplish these ends the adherents of the contestee in this county knew no bounds. Beginning at the court-house, and extending to every portion of it, a purpose to disregard the law in order to defeat the rights of the majority was boldly carried out. At Edgefield Court-House the poll is proven to have been counted 763 for contestee and 11 for contestant. If we eliminate from the statements of the contestee's witnesses their opinions and other irrelevant matter, there is no conflict as to the material facts. The poll was held up-stairs in the court-room, and one of the double doors was securely closed, whilst the other, 18 inches wide, was kept by a Democratic guard, so that those Republicans who succeeded in running the gauntlet of the one hundred Democrats who thronged and crowded the staircase were held here and subjected to further insult and violence until they could struggle out, with their clothes cut, whilst the gallery or porch over the outside entrance was filled with Democrats armed with brickbats, and the Masonic Hall opposite was occupied by a military company, the Edgefield Rifles. To call this an election is a reflection on American institutions.

At Mount Willing the poll was held inside of a house, the entrance guarded by Democrats. "Republicans were kept back, Democrats admitted," until the Democrats had all voted, when a party of mounted Democrats rode up, and, opening fire, drove the Republicans from the poll. Two hundred voters were driven off, and the supervisor prevented from discharging his duty (p. 193).

At Meeting Street (p. 207) and Cheatham's Store (p. 204) the same course was adopted, and at both of them the supervisor was prevented from discharging his duty.

At George's Cross-Roads the Republicans were kept back by mounted Democrats crowding the polls, whilst at Pleasant Lane contestee's own witness admits that there were as many as fifty Republicans at the polls, but that only one Republican vote was counted. At Red Hill and Richardsonville the supervisors were interfered with and prevented from discharging their duties, their commissions and papers taken from them, and they were driven away, whilst the voters were hindered by force from casting their ballots. At Landrum's Store the supervisor's poll-list was taken away from him and 76 fraudulent ballots stuffed into the box, whilst at Johnston's, after keeping the Republicans from the polls by crowding them until about two o'clock, the Democrats commenced a general disturbance, ran off the supervisor, and opened fire on the Republicans, in which a colored Republican was shot in the head and his dead body left on the ground. At this poll 800 voters were driven off. During the day squads of armed Democrats were kept riding from precinct to precinct, under the pretended apprehension that the Republicans were going to seize the polls, but their conduct and bearing leave no room for doubt that their sole purpose was to prevent the supervisors from acting and to awe and intimidate the voters and drive them away from the polls; and they were successful in their efforts to this end.

At Tolbert's Store the supervisor was not allowed in the room where the poll was held; armed bodies of Democrats crowded the polls, obstructed the electors, and 150 were prevented from voting.

At Red Hill the supervisor's commission and papers were taken from him and destroyed. With the boxes containing the ballots, and from all but one of them the poll-lists also, before them the county board refused

to count or include in the statement the vote of five precincts, to wit, Etheridge's Store, Perry's Cross- Roads, Coleman's Cros-Roads, Caughmen's Store, and Liberty Hill. In this they clearly transcended their powers under the law. The testimony most conclusively shows that in the county the whites were Democrats and the colored people were voting or trying to vote the Republican ticket. The testimony shows that 3,020 Republicans were at the polls in this county anxiously trying to vote and who were prevented by force from doing so. The contest was to keep the colored people from voting, for the nature of their vote was unquestionable. The census taken the year of this election shows whites over 21 years, 3,553; colored, 5,648. Yet it is claimed the contestee received 6,467 votes and the contestant only 1,046. Had every white voter in the county, therefore, actually voted for the contestee he could not have gotten this vote by 2,877, and the utter absurdity of the proposition that this or any considerable number of colored people voted for the contestee is fully established by the testimony; and this fact also illustrates the conclusiveness of the proofs which have induced your committee, after a thorough and careful consideration of the testimony, to conclude that there was no legal and valid election held in the county of Edgefield on the 2d of November, 1880. That the will of the electors was suppressed by violence and intimidation, and that the pretended count and canvass of the vote is involved in an inextricable confusion of fraud, and that the records which should establish the truth in regard to it have been illegally suppressed.

REFERENCES TO TESTIMONY IN EDGEFIELD CO.

As to Edgefield Court-House:

Testimony of W. E. Lynch, p. 432.

Testimony of A. J. Lee, pp. 433, 434.

Testimony of Paris Simpkins, pp. 443, 459.

Testimony of Norman Youngblood, pp. 453, 456.

Testimony of L. Cain, p. 457 et seq.

Testimony of Jesse Jones, p. 465.

Testimony of M. O. Sheppard, pp. 498, 500.

Testimony of D. R. Durisoe, pp. 528, 529.

Testimony of Lewis Jones, pp. 517, 518, 519, 521.

Testimony of G. W. Wise, p. 536.

Testimony of Charles Holmes, p. 694.

Testimony of Wiley Weaver, p. 690.

Testimony of R. T. Anderson, p. 504.
Mount Willing:
George Valentine, p. 417.
David Graham, p. 438.

Meeting Street:

W. T. Tillman, pp. 207, 430.

Cheatham's Store:

Brister J. Yeldell, p. 428.
Harry Oliphant, p. 451.
John Brunson, p. 538.
D. I. Mitchell, p. 701.
George's Cross-Roads:
Westley Long, pp. 424, 425.
Red Hill:

Anderson Carter, p. 442.

Richardsonville:

Richmond Morley, p. 435.

Pleasant Lane:

James P. Norris, p. 541.
Talbert's Store:

Lewis W. Collins, p. 441.
Landrum's Store:

Nathan Sullivan, p. 82.
Johnston's:

William Scott, p. 546.
Willis Vermillion, p. 85.
Butler Burt, p. 86.

John Hammond, p. 87.

EDGEFIELD C. H.

W. E. Lynch testifies (page 432) as follows:

Was one of the commissioners of election for Edgefield County.

Q. To what political party did the managers belong?-A. Mostly to Democrats. Q. Were any Republicans appointed-A. Not that I know of.

Q. Did or did not the board of commissioners, as far as possible, select Democrats for managers?-A. They did.

Q. Acting as a board of county canvassers, did the commissioners return all the returns or ballots from each and every precinct in the county -A. They did not.

Q. How many and what polls were not canvassed?-A. They were five-Ethridge's Store, Perry's Cross-Roads, Coleman's Cross-Roads, Caughman's Store, Liberty Hill. Q. Why were those polls not counted?-A. On account of irregularities.

Q. In what did those irregularities consist ?—A. Managers failed to make a return or send any poll-list.

Q. Were these ballots counted by the board of county canvassers ?-A. Not by the county board.

G. Do you know how many ballots these ballots or either of them contained ?—A. No, sir.

Q. Did you see the boxes opened?-A. I did.

Q. What was the appearance of these boxes when opened?-A. Nothing in them but ballots; one was full, other partially filled.

Q. Under what law did the board act in rejecting these polls?-A. I don't know what law; but we were advised that we had nothing to go on.

Q. Who gave you this advice?-A. I don't remember now.

Q. Were they Democrats or Republicans?-A. Democrats.

Andrew J. Lee testifies (page 433) as follows:

Q. Did you hold any official position at the late election, and, if so, what?—A. I was one of the commissioners of election for Edgefield County.

Q. From what political party were the commissioners of election appointed ?—A. The Democratic.

Q. Were any Republicans appointed?-A. None.

Q. At the canvassing of the votes by the commissioners, were any polls not canvassed?-A. No, sir; five were not counted; don't remember the polls.

Q. Why were they rejected?-A. Because they were not returned according to law. Q. Was there any other reason assigned by either of the commissioners, or any other person in the presence of the board, why you should not count them?-A. None at all.

Q. When these boxes were opened (five) what was their appearance?-A. Some did not have their returns in them, and one had nothing but ballots in it; one was nearly full, the others about half full.

And on page 434 as follows:

Q. What ticket did you vote at the last election?-A. I did not vote.

Q. What ticket did you vote 1878-A. I did not vote.

Q. What in 1876?-A. The Republican.

Q. Why did you not vote at the last election?-A. Because the generality of th Republicans did not vote, and I did not want to after they all left.

Q. Was not your Republicanism strong enough to cause you to vote that day ?—A. Yes, sir, but I did not think it would do any good. I was invited to vote that evening.