Hoke Smith Burned in Effigy

Article taken from The Lorain County Reporter, August 5, 1893

PORTSMOUTH, Ohio. July 29 - Hoke Smith Secretary of the Interior, was burned in effigy to-night at Rome, Ohio, thirty miles below this city, in Adams county. The burning figure was attened by the wildest enthusiasm and the most demonstrative excoriation of the hated Cadinet minister.

The occasion for this demonstration was the dropping from the pension rolls of the name of J.L. Reed, an old soldier whose record was exceptional, and whose entirely helpless condition made his case a pathetic one. Reed was a member of the Eleventh Illinois cavalry, the regiment which Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll commanded. He is now 85 years of age and totally without means of support, his pension being the only thing between him and absolute starvation. The discontinuance of the pension has made a raving maniac of him. It was at first intended by the old soldiers of this country and their sympathizers to burn the President as a companion with Hoke, but susepuently better council prevailed and this was abandoned.

The feeling bordered on the riotous and all efforts to head off the leaders in the prosecutions of their plans were met with derision and threats of violence should there be any interference. This is only the first outburst of a most intense feeling of hate entertained by a majority of the soldiers of this (Scioto) and the adjoining counties of Pike and Adams toward the promulgator of the recent pension ruling, which has temporarily, at least, forced so many soldiers off the rolls, and cast a shadow of doubt upon the integrity of all pensioners receiving pensions under the recent law.