spasmodic ventings of an overwrought public sentiment that has been instilled and tutored by the press and leaders of that party ever since the war. In reality, not half has been told of the attempts at stifling free speech in Alabama.

Although the entire record of the “Bourbon” element is indeed unenviable and astonishing, yet, never before in the history of Southern Democratic campaign ruffianism had this spirit reached the height of deviltry displayed during 1892, in Alabama. With organized rabbles at their back, and partisan courts at their faces, political bullies openly boasted of their lawlessness and engaged in their dastardly outrages defiant to morality, honesty, conscience or prosecution.

During the last weeks of the Kolb-Jones campaign this barbaric nature was beginning to be fully drawn out; the most cowardly demonstration of its existence having first been made at Florence, Ala., where the writer was attacked at midnight, July 27, by a mob that had assembled at the depot to do him violence upon his departure from the town. The mob, as was stated by dispatches published in the Democratic press, consisted of “fifty enraged citizens.” The riotous crowd was incited and collected by partisans, for no other than a political cause; and had it not been that the writer succeeded in reaching the platform of the car unobserved, no doubt but that he would have been egged, stoned, or shot to death. The lights had been extinguished in the depot, which is located in a desolate part of the town, and every other arrangement was seemingly made for the doing of a dark and bloody deed. These villainous plans proved, however, to be advantageous to the writer, who escaped a brutally-designed assassination by getting on the platform of the car before the shower of missiles had commenced. The writer’s hat suffered ruin from the “indignation,” and a Memphis & Charleston car was turned into the shops spattered and battered. Herewith is given a letter, referring to the Florence incident, and as its author is one of Alabama’s most eminent ministers, this document will prove valuable literature: