Part 3 (2/2)
Senator Chaffee, of Colorado, who is now at Saratoga, was asked if he expected an early revival of business, and in response said: ”Yes; a beginning of a revival, because the excessively hard times and real hunger have driven the lazy to work. I was at Hot Springs, Ark., not long ago, and saw thousands of people going through to Texas. As many as twelve hundred emigrants would go through Arkansas in a day. I talked to many of them, and they told me that they had not generally twenty-five dollars ahead of the railroad fare, but said that they desired to get a piece of ground, raise potatoes, or anything, and be independent. That is what will bring us up, and nothing else, every idle person to do something at production.
RECENT BULL-DOZING IN LOUISIANA.
The Pointe Coupee, La., ”Record,” a Democratic paper, on the 17th inst., said:--
”It is rumored that several men from Bayou Fordoche came to the court house this morning to make affidavits against certain parties from that section of the parish. The complaint is shooting and whipping.”
Commenting on this, the New Orleans ”Observer” of the 24th said:--
”From sources absolutely reliable, affecting affairs in Pointe Coupee parish, we learn that since the hanging of four black men in the Racourcee settlement by the bull-dozers of that section, the colored people thereabouts have sought to leave the locality, going to Fordoche, a bayou neighborhood where is a large colored settlement of small farmers.
”Determined to stop this migration of colored people, and at the same time terrorize the Fordoche farmers, on the night of the 14th inst., Wednesday, a crowd of bull-dozers, some sixty odd men from Racourcee, came to this colored settlement, and for no known cause, save that which we have expressed, outraged several inoffensive and hard-working colored people. Lucy Allain, a colored woman, was stripped and whipped unmercifully, and the same treatment was given William Abraham. Levi Sherman was shot three times. All three of these victims are now confined, by reason of this outrage, to their beds. Others of the colored people would have received like treatment, but they got out of the way. A prisoner in the jail there was hung for sport. Fortunately, he was cut down in time to save his life. Some colored people were outraged, and atrocities and indignities practised generally befitting the lawless character of the Democratic party-workers and bull-dozers.
The good citizens (white) of the locality have called a ma.s.s meeting to express their indignation and to attempt to redress these wrongs, or at least put a stop to further outrages. The meeting was to have had place on Wednesday, the 21st inst. A similar meeting was also called for the same day at New Roads. The information furnished us of these horrible crimes is from purely Democratic sources, gentlemen and decent citizens who abhor the partisan atrocities of their party-workers. So far as we can learn, Republicans of Pointe Coupee are so terrorized that even prominent gentlemen there will say nothing of this act of atrocity, the information in fact reaching this city and our office from responsible Democratic citizens. We are informed that the plantation visited was one of the New York Warehouse and Security Company's places, and of which Mr. Bradish Johnson is the agent.
The Macon, Ga., ”Telegraph” is only a little in advance of the ex-Confederate ”conservatives” when it demands the repeal of the fourteenth amendment, that the Southern people may extort payment for their liberated slaves. That will soon be one of the regular planks in the Southern Democratic platform.
In Jasper County, Georgia, since the war (reports a local paper), there have been sixty-nine men killed, and not a single hanging.
The Augusta (Ga.) ”Chronicle” suggests that the proper place for Congressman Rainey (the man whose sobriety enabled Congress to adjourn on the day appointed) is the chain-gang. Perhaps his consignment to a slave-gang would suit the ”Chronicle” better.
The Democrats claim that white and colored school children have equal school privileges in Georgia, but this is far from being true. In Atlanta, there are fine houses for the white scholars; the colored scholars are sent to cellars and other unfit places, and are limited in accommodation at that.
The Charleston ”News and Courier” is Wade Hampton's organ, and it is leading his campaign in South Carolina. Alarmed because the Republicans threatened to exercise their right to talk politics and vote, the organ says: ”Seceders and malcontents will be treated as public enemies, and made political outcasts. The Democratic party will not lay down the sceptre of authority in South Carolina, nor shall the sceptre be wrested from the strong hands by which it is grasped.” That is, Wade Hampton says, in substance, ”I am for conciliating those who vote for me, but death to all who oppose!” Truly, as Gov. Boutwell said in his Maine speech, the Southern question is given the greater importance in this campaign by the action of the ex-rebels.
In North Carolina, the Republican leaders are trying to induce the negroes to vote by telling them that the coming election will be a fair and free one. The deception is not justifiable, and will cost the men who resort to it the confidence of the colored voters.
The vote for the Democratic State ticket last week was about eighty thousand. There was no opposition. The legislature will be almost entirely Democratic.--_Despatch from Alabama_.
And where, pray, is that new Independent party; where are the old Whigs, the administration Democrats, not to say anything about the resuscitated Republicans, who were to arise from the policy of conciliation? Alabama is pretty solid.
To deprive man of the fruit of his labors is to cut the sinews of industry. Who will care to labor if another is to appropriate the results of his toil? He is deprived of an inalienable right, the enjoyment of which alone can induce him to exercise the self-denial implied in labor and economy. To distribute the products of his industry to the community, as some social theorists would teach us, is to destroy individual enterprise, and to reduce society to a great almshouse.--_Zion's Herald_.
[Despatch to the Traveller.]
FREEDOM OF SPEECH NOT TOLERATED IN SOUTH CAROLINA.
”New York, Oct. 15.--A Was.h.i.+ngton despatch says that Congressmen Smalls and Rainey have been obliged to flee from South Carolina on account of their activity in organizing Republican meetings, and they were yesterday promised protection by the President.”
Protection where? in Was.h.i.+ngton or South Carolina? It cannot be in the latter, for the President has put his ”Federal bayonets” into the hands of Gov. (?) Hampton, and voluntarily shut himself out of that State.
Nay, more, he has driven the bolts through his military power as commander-in-chief of the nation, and the last Congress screwed on the nut, which leaves the President powerless, and the Governor all-powerful. Let us see how he is using that power. The Democratic paper of Sumter County, edited by one of the aids of Wade Hampton, calls upon the Democrats to turn out and break up the Republican meetings in such appeals as the following:--
”Men with mothers and wives; men with sisters dear; men who expect to raise families in Sumter County,--let your sons and daughters turn out on Sat.u.r.day and meet the thieves whom Sam Lee is gathering together and attempting to fasten on us as our rulers and masters in this county. Let everything be conducted on Sat.u.r.day with military order, promptness, and decision. In 1861 our Southern braves left their homes and firesides and encountered every conceivable bodily privation, every danger, for a cause that dwarfs into perfect insignificance in comparison with the Democratic cause in this county to-day, and yet are there men who are so ease-loving and unpatriotic that they will not turn out on Sat.u.r.day to meet the Republican thieves? If such there be, go mark them well.
”Let Northern speakers come; we intend to carry Sumter County Democratic, at the next election, in spite of the world, flesh, and the devil.
”Democrats should rally as one, on Sat.u.r.day. He who dallies is dastard.
He who doubts is d.a.m.ned.
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