That was quite a love feast held in the Opera House, Lynchburg, Va., a few weeks since, when local politicians, United States officials and Northern business men of the city united, regardless of party prejudices, in tendering a supper to capitalists from Pittsburgh, and all joined in applauding the name of Blaine, from whom a telegram was received during the evening, “until the rafters rang again.”
Whatever opinion we may form as to the justice of the charges made by Senator Dawes or the sufficiency of Secretary Schurz’s reply, we can and do rejoice that they seem to vie with each other in demanding justice for the Poncas, and we would commend not alone to the Massachusetts Senator, but to all the members of Congress, the appeal of the Secretary of the Interior, and express the conviction that the American people will not hold them guiltless of a large share of the guilt incurred in that matter, if they fail, before adjournment, to carry out the recommendations of the President. Mr. Schurz concludes his letter to Senator Dawes as follows:
“Permit me now to make an appeal for the Poncas to you, Senator. Let these Indians at last have rest. Recognize their rights by giving them the indemnity they justly asked for and which I asked for them years ago. Let them quietly go about their farms and improve their homes and send their children to school, undisturbed by further agitation. That is the best service you can render them. They would probably be in a better condition already had that agitation never reached them.”
SENATOR BROWN ON THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION.
Hon. Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, who has recently been elected U. S. Senator, has for a long time manifested an interest in our work. A short time since he gave $50,000 to an institution under the auspices of the Baptists, for the education of the whites. On the night before his election, in an address to the Legislature, he expressed his appreciation of the importance of education in the following words:
“I have the educational question very much at heart. Disguise it as you may, the New England States, with their schools and universities, have dictated laws to this continent. They have sent New England ideas all over the West, and they dominate there. Look at Prussia, that little Empire over which Napoleon rushed and almost obliterated. Hardly a generation passed before it had in turn humbled France and taken the power from its Empire. The bright-eyed boys in your mountains and wire-grass may represent you nobly before the world if you educate them. We must also educate the colored race, and they ought to be educated for the benefit of the Union, and by the friends of the Union. I would devote the proceeds of the public lands to this purpose on a basis of illiteracy. The colored people are citizens, and we must do them justice. Let us give them every legal right. Social rights will take care of themselves.”