When emancipation took place, in 1863, it was not thought, by the noble army of philanthropists who had labored more than a quarter of a century for its accomplishment, that it would ever be necessary for the freedmen to flee their native States, in order to enjoy their civil and political rights and privileges under the Constitution. Nor was it ever dreamed by the voting Republicans of 1876, that the administration they were putting into power could ever become so stupid as to surrender the national power into the hands of the rebel States, under so thin a guise as the old exploded humbug of South Carolina nullification—State rights, home-rule doctrine; and then stand by with folded arms and see the freedmen deliberately turned over to the tender mercies of the political trinity of despotism, to be stripped of their civil and political rights under the Constitution, and to be refused protection by the national government. It made no difference that the robbers were rebels and the robbed loyal citizens. The hollow promises of the rebels who had fought four years to destroy the government, it seems, were better currency at Washington than the protests of the loyal people who had saved it. But the fifteen years that have elapsed since emancipation, have demonstrated the fact that these loyal people who fought for and saved the government, and who voted for and elected the present administration, must be returned to practical slavery, submit to serfdom, or emigrate to more civilized States, where their civil and political rights will be cheerfully accorded to them. The proof of this proposition lies in the fact that State after State, in the South, which had amended their ante-bellum constitutions, so as to conform to that of the United States, preparatory to their readmission to the Union after the war, have, since their admission, remodelled the said constitutions in the interest of the "dominant class of white rulers." Moreover, the leaders of that If "the dominant race," as Mr. Gordon called them at the Revere House dinner, with the approval of Governor Rice and company, choose to put their carts before their donkeys, in their own States, they can do so, but when they call upon the nation to do it, the North may have a word to say about it. If that "dominant race" we have heard so much about, and of which we have had such sad specimens in the present Congress, are expecting to get their potatoes dug, their corn hoed, and their cotton picked, for a peck of corn or so per week to each laborer, as their fathers have done for a couple of centuries past, we beg leave to differ from them, and suggest to their laborers a more excellent way for themselves. More than this: we propose to assist those who desire a better condition, to obtain it quietly, where each can enjoy the fruits of his own labors, and sit with his family under his own vine and fig-tree, man fashion, and where their wives and daughters will not be stripped and receive upon their bare backs, for some petty offence, as many lashes as the "dominant race" may please to inflict, as was the practice under the old slave code, and is still continued. The whipping-post is as yet an institution of the slave oligarchy, if we may credit the following telegram:— "At Hampton, Virginia, the other day, a white girl of fourteen years received fifteen lashes at the whipping-post for stealing a pair of shoes." If the "white girl of fourteen years" had stolen, instead of a pair of shoes, the assets of a bank, railroad, or any other corporation, she would have been wined and If our Northern readers feel that we have overdrawn the picture, and "flaunted the bloody shirt," we beg them to remember that the Southern press furnishes the material for that article. The last Boston paper we happened to take up while writing, has the following quotation from the "Oskolona (Mississippi) Southern States":— "The future belongs to us and ours. Davis and his Cabinet and his soldiers will rank with the Washingtons, the Hampdens, and the Tells in the Pantheon of history, while Grant and his horde of bloody hirelings will be classed with the Vandals, Goths, and Huns." We will refer the reader to the "Appendix" of this, No. 9, for further evidence of the public sentiment at the South, which goes to show that the freedmen must EMIGRATE, FIGHT, or PERISH. While the churches of the North are sending missionaries to educate them up to the point of Christian citizenship and an educated ballot, the "dominant white race" are robbing them of their political rights, shooting them down, if they dare to assert them, and making them "hewers of wood and drawers of water," as in the olden times of American slavery. (See Appendix for evidence of this.) |