While the Grand Jury were holding their sessions as previously stated, and
only a short time after Deason's death, a band of twenty armed and
disguised men rode into Irwinton and murdered one Brinton Porter, an
intelligent citizen whose offense consisted like Deason's in his having
disseminated Republican principles and voted the Republican ticket.
Porter had received a warning similar to that sent to Deason, but had said
nothing about it, even to the members of his own family. After receiving
the warning he had neither openly expressed his radical views, nor made
recantation of his political faith, but as he had not left the country, as
the warning stated he must do, his doom was pronounced in the conclave of
the Camp, and it was ordered that he should die.
On the 8th of September, 1871, after concluding the business of the day,
and taking tea with his family, Mr. Porter left the family table, and,
taking a chair, went out to his door stoop. His only child, a daughter of
tender years, accompanied him and sat at his feet. He saw the band of
disguised men approaching the house, and deeming himself in danger,
immediately arose and was in the act of entering the house when he fell
across the threshold pierced by half a dozen bullets, which had been
discharged at him by the Klan. The child escaped unhurt. The Klan seeing
they had accomplished their purpose, wheeled around and with derisive
yells passed out of the town at a sharp trot.
The agony of Porter's family beggars description. A wife widowed, and a
child orphaned in a moment, because their natural protector had assumed
the right guaranteed to him by the Constitution and the laws, to exercise
the elective franchise according to his own opinion, and the dictates of
his own conscience. Can one believe, that in the civilization of the 19th
century, and upon the American continent, the boasted refuge for the
down-trodden, and the oppressed of all nations, such a scene as that above
related could be enacted in the broad light of day, and the whole
community not rise up against it? Alas, for the degradation to which
political bigotry and a disregard of law, reduces a people, it is only too
true.
The data upon which this truthful narration of the murder of Brinton
Porter is founded, is a matter of record in the archives of the
Government. The facts can neither be gainsaid nor palliated. It is to be
hoped that the firm policy of the present administration may bring the
people of the community in which Porter lived to such a sense of the great
injustice done among them, that they will rally to aid the Government, in
bursting the bands thrown about them by the subtletry of their own
unprincipled leaders, and stand shoulder to shoulder with those who are
doing all that human wisdom can devise to restore order and harmony, and
promote prosperity and happiness among the people.