Mississippi Acts to
Confront Threat of
Armed Insurrection
Fear of Colored Revolt Sweeps the State
Gov. Says Emergency Situation Demands Strong Action
By wireless to The Massachusetts Spy
JACKSON, Miss. - The Legislature has overwhelmingly passed a law intended to combat the spectre of terrorist insurrection on the part of the disaffected colored population of this state.
"The white people of the state of Mississippi are faced with a threat unlike any they have faced before: armed insurrection by nigra terrorists out to destroy our freedom-loving way of life," declared Gov. Jeb Addington, as he signed the bill into law.
The law contains a number of provisions intended to protect the state. Among them is the ability of the state's executive department or any sheriff or other peace officer deputized by that department to "take into custody" any "person of color suspected of involvement in terrorist or insurrectionary activities." Such individuals may be detained for as long as their conduct is being investigated.
However, to allay the concerns of planters and plantation owners worried about the loss of colored farm labor, the bill permits any individual so held to be paroled into the custody of "any loyal white citizen of the state who intends to use such person for labor." Escape from such parole is to be treated as a capital offense.
The bill further prohibits persons held on suspicion of terrorist activity from "employing any writ to challenge the lawfulness of their detention or parole." This provision is designed to keep judges from interfering in state business, a source close to the Legislature explained to the Spy.
Among the most controversial provisions of the new law are those relating to the conduct of terrorism investigations. The law provides that "in investigating suspicions of terrorist or insurrectionary activity, any peace officer may use any methods generally in use with respect to chattels prior to 1865."
The reference of course is to techniques used to control slaves prior to the coming into force of the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Mississippi officials told the Spy that such techniques included the use of what they described as "especially persuasive methods."
These methods included subjecting the individual to extremes of heat and cold, dousing with or ingestion of great quantities of water, flogging, branding, stripping the suspect naked for extended periods of time and the use of dogs.
"These methods are needed to root out the leaders of nigra insurrection and to ensure peace and tranquility for the good people of Mississippi," Gov. Addington explained.
The legislation did engender some debate in the state. Some individuals, who have since been tarred and feathered, suggested that the law was inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights.
Others, no longer living, claimed the entire legislative package was simply a way to resurrect the outlawed institution of slavery under the guise of "parole" or "peonage."
Gov. Addington dismissed these claims as the "wails of black Republicans who want to bring this great state down and subject it once more to the nightmare of nigger government."
He told his fellow white citizens that the choice was clear: "We can either take steps to fight black insurrection or consent to the ravishing of your wives and daughters by lust-crazed Africans. This is no time to retreat from our sacred duty to protect white Christian womanhood."
Scoffing at critics of the bill's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, Gov. Addington joked: "They want corpses, we'll give them corpses."
With the shooting and terrorizing of the bill's opponents complete, the enactment of the bill has generated relatively little debate in this placid, rural state.
However, some Northerners have harshly criticized the bill as "an unwarranted departure from the norms of civilized conduct and the rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution," in the words of Connecticut lawyer Prescott Bush, Esq.
In a statement read on the Town Green at New Canaan last Sunday, Mr. Bush told his fellow townspeople that "no civilized person could ever regard such laws as anything but a descent into barbarism. Thank God we live in Connecticut where such things could never happen!"
Volume CCXXXVI, Number 143 October 7, 2006
