"If colored people are willing to become Democrats in good faith, it will require grave deliberation to determine whether it is not wiser to let them in, and give them a voice in the party, than to leave them outside as a bait for Independent Democrats. The Independent, not the colored Democrat, is the rock ahead in South Carolina politics."
The "News" is willing to allow negroes to act in the Democratic party, it seems, solely because the colored vote may thereby be controlled. It does not concede their right to vote, and to vote as they may choose, but it realizes that some of them will vote, notwithstanding the opposition of the Spartan school of Democracy, and seeking to have that vote controlled in the interests of the party, it is willing to have it understood by the negroes that they will find no obstacles in the way of their voting, if they unite with the Democratic party. The same end is sought by the "Spartan" and by the "News." The first-named wishes to secure the supremacy of a race by preventing the negroes from voting, while the "News" thinks it a better policy to adopt measures for the control of their votes. The "News" is no more friendly to the colored men than its contemporary, and the policy it proposes is as dangerous to their rights, as that of those who, in an outspoken manner, tell the negroes they are entitled to no political privileges.
Plain Talk.—The Providence "Journal" says: "The stipulations to which the Southern States solemnly pledged themselves, as the conditions of restoration to their forfeited rights in the Union, and to their readmission to a share in the government which they had attempted to overthrow, have been shamelessly violated. The negro is not permitted to vote unless he is frightened into voting the Democratic ticket. He has practically 'no rights which a white man is bound to respect.' In some of these States a sort of peonage has been established, which differs from slavery mainly in the exemption of the master from the care of the slave in sickness and old age, and in all of them disqualifying laws, and still more disqualifying practices under the laws, prevail. History presents no parallel to the forbearance shown by the conquering party in the rebellion, and none to the perfidy of the party that was overcome."
A leading paper in the State of Senator Gordon—the Columbus "Enquirer-Sun,"—thus favors the lynch law: "A good, able-bodied, healthy corpse, or even a slightly damaged one, dangling from the limb of a tree on a public highway, strikes more terror into the heart of a criminal, and creates more respect for the fiat of justice, than the inside of a thousand jails, or the presence of an army of judges and jurymen. There is an appalling grandeur, a horrifying sublimity in the spectacle of a ghastly, half-devoured human form suspended in mid-air, receiving alike unconsciously the refreshing drops of the nocturnal dew that gives life to the violets, or the glowing rays of the morning sun as it ascends the eastern horizon and beams smilingly down on a busy world."
Which is correct? Here is Representative Waddell of North Carolina, formerly a rebel general, telling an organization of Union veterans, that not one person in one hundred thousand in the South expects or desires compensation for property destroyed by the Union armies, and here is ex-editor Cheney of Lebanon, who has travelled through the South and sojourned in Florida, saying: "You meet with no man in the South who does not either earnestly assert the justice of these claims, or leave with you the impression that he hopes they will be paid, because such payment means more money and greater prosperity for the South. Even the negroes, when it comes to the test, will be found co-operating with their masters to secure compensation for their own freedom." We repeat our question, Which is correct?—Concord Monitor.
LOUISIANA.
Ex-Governor Pinchbeck had an interview with the President recently, in which he took occasion to express his views concerning the needs of Louisiana. He represents the interview to have been pleasant and satisfactory. Pinchbeck says the State has now the best governor of any other within his recollection; that the people were generally better satisfied than heretofore, with the condition of affairs, although the people there, as elsewhere, complain of hard times. The only thing of which Pinchbeck complains is that the few children, nearly white, in the public schools in New Orleans, have been required to leave them. They should, he said, have been permitted to remain until faded out by increase of years. His own children were included in the number removed by the school authorities.
THE SOUTHERN POLICY.
The Principia Club of Cambridgeport has just published a pamphlet of 160 pages with the above title, containing a history of the President's Southern policy, so far as developed, up to the close of the extra session of Congress. The facts and testimony were collated by its president, and constitute a chain of evidence absolutely overwhelming to all but the conspirators, who are determined to ignore the facts and swear it through in the interest of the bull-dozed Democracy. That the said policy is a failure to promote Republicanism, can no longer be doubted. That it has put the government of the country into the power of the conspirators is abundantly proved by this pamphlet, which will be read with great interest.—Traveller.
The colored people of the South are physically and socially in a worse condition to-day than when held in the bonds of slavery, and as citizens their badge of citizenship is a mockery, and far more galling than the chains which bound them in involuntary servitude. The Constitution promises them protection in equal rights before the law as citizens, but the protecting arm of the Federal power has been withdrawn, and the written law is not worth the parchment on which it is inscribed. The guarantees of the Constitution are suspended. The rights of citizenship are a baseless dream. The heel of political oppression is planted upon their citizenship with a power as ruthless as that which restrained their physical freedom as men. The Constitution and its guarantees have become a mere sham.—Washington Republican.