LIFE DOWN SOUTH.

Southland Times, Issue 1174, 11 June 1869, Page 3

LIFE DOWN SOUTH.

(prom the ' Memphis Avalanche,' Jan. 19. "We recoil in very terror and sickness of heart from what we have to write. Gladly would we believe that the cad blood-curdling tale were but the fancy of an alarmist— the creation of a diseased imagination. But the truth, in justice to outraged virtue and for the information of a civilised world, must be told. We have read and written so many sickening tales from Arkansas of late that the very name has become a synonym for an earthly hell, and we are assured by truthful citizens that the reports concerning outrages and oppression in Arkansas as published in this journal have not been exaggerated in the aggregate, but hare fallen far short of the whole story. G-ladly would we hear that it was all a mistake, that the people in our sister State were eDgagedin peaceful pursuits, protected^ under the laws, in life and property, and secure from lawlessness, rapine, and lust, but no such pleasing picture can be truthfully drawn. In Crittenden county, Arkansas, not many miles from Memphis, lives a loyal man named Tato Calloway. He is loyal in a truly partisan sense, and at the last election voted the Hadical ticket. Last Friday, the 15th inst., two negro militiamen and a fifteen year old negro boy went to the house of this Calloway and at once arrested him. After placing the boy over him as a guard, they seized his wife and her sister, and violated their persons before his eyes. There waß in the house at the time a small boy named Jim M'G-ehee, but he was intimidated into silence by the pistols and threats of the negroes. They stripped and dressed themselves in Mr Calloway's clothes. They then asked Mrs Calloway for a hymn book. She told them that they could take what they pleased, but she would give them nothing. they replied with brutal jeers and oaths that they intended to sing a hymn over her dead body, and were about to perpetrate further violence when some white militia came along and released Mr Calloway, at the same time giving him a gun and telling him to avenge himself. But, to the disgrace of mankind, and Calloway in particular, he stood tamely by and made no effort to slay the brutes, who grinned at him, wearing his own clothes. The white militia then arrested the negroes and took them off toward Marion. Calloway is condemned and denounced by all his neighbours for not seizing the weapons of the negro boy guarding him in the first place and revenging the crimes committed on his household. Four other outrages have been committed upon white women near Marion within a few days. The full particulars have not reached us, but we have convincing assurances from persons who know that these outrages have been committed, and that the fiendish perpetrators go at large, unpunished, and are still depredating unrestrained upon the terror-stricken people. One hundred and fifty of the cavalry under the command of G-eneral Upham have gone to the Mississippi county on a plundering expedition, but the infantry highwaymen remain to further harrass and distress the people of Crittenden county. A report comes across the river that the three citizens, mentioned in our last issue as having been spirited away, were designed for execution, and that two of them were put to rteath at ov near a place called French's Bayou. The names of the victims were Harney, a nephew of Q-en. Harney, and a Mr Skipp. They were hung up several times to extort confessions from them, but nothing was elicited, and finally they were made away with in a summary manner. The third man was afterwards seen at Oceola, and it was supposed that he had escaped. The general correctness of this report is not doubted, although we are not able to give full particulars.