by Jack Thorne
CHAPTER XVI.
Tempting Negroes to Return.
Wilmington Officials Scouring the Woods for Refugees--Want Them to Return and Go to Work.
Special to The World.
Wilmington, N. C., Nov. 13.--Affairs are settling down to their normalcondition here. Chief of Police Edgar G. Parmle and severalrepresentatives of the new city government drove out ten miles on thevarious roads leading from the city to-day, to induce the refugeeNegroes to come back.
City officials also attended the colored churches and urged the pastorsand their people to go into the woods to induce the frightened Negroesto return and resume their work.
The pastors of the white churches referred to the riot in their sermonsto-day. The burden of the discourses was that the struggle at the pollsTuesday was for liberty, decency, honesty and right; that it was not somuch the drawing of the color line as a contest for the supremacy ofintelligence and competence over ignorance, incompetence and debauchery.
Dr. Hoge, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, who recently preachedin the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, and was mentioned asDr. Hall's successor, took as his text: "He that ruleth his spirit isbetter than he that taketh a city."
"We have done both," he said. "We have taken a city. That is much, butit is more because it is our own city that we have taken."
Dr. Hoge justified the movement which led to the change of government.