Part 4 (2/2)
The question that has recently come up between the Secretary of the Interior and the Pacific railroads must be settled, so far as we can see, in favor of the Secretary, who has just issued a pamphlet with the grounds of his decision, and which has been sent us.
The railroads, however, may delay matters by their dilatoriness in making their returns to government of the lands sold by them, their location, &c., and it may be necessary for Congress to hurry up that matter a little, so that the land commissioner can give the desired information.
But there is no time to be lost. The ”conciliated” Wade Hampton, and the Hamburg-ma.s.sacre-Butler crowd have already organized the second rebellion in South Carolina, and armed their militia with ”federal bayonets,” over which waves the ”b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.+rt,” inscribed with Hampton's declaration in a speech in Sumter County, ”that the Democrats must carry that county at all hazards,” supplemented by Senator!! Butler, who ”said it was unnecessary to tell them _how_ to do it.” ”Webb,” a correspondent of the Boston ”Journal,” tells us in the following paragraph, how they are doing it:--
SHAMEFUL CONDUCT OF THE MILITARY.
”Armed men have been stationed as pickets on roads leading to county conventions. These men were supplied with State arms, furnished through the United States, were evidently under good military discipline, had recognized officers, and were known as members of the State volunteer militia. At first they appeared without uniforms; of late they have attempted in uniform to break up Republican meetings. They have not hesitated to announce publicly that the white people of South Carolina had decided that Republican meetings should not be held, and that any attempt to hold such meetings might result in personal injury. At one of the meetings at Sumter County, one of the aids of Governor Hampton knocked the Republican chairman from the stand. Another seized the chairman by the throat and severely injured him. The speaker was Probate Judge Lee, who acted as chairman of the meeting, and who at that time was threatened both with shooting and hanging. So many authorized details of those acts of violence have been brought to the knowledge of the Administration here that the President and his Cabinet are convinced that there is an organized movement in South Carolina to put down by violence any attempt at Republican organization, and that Wade Hampton is giving this revolutionary and cowardly movement his active personal support. It is, perhaps, needless to say that the President is very much surprised at Hampton's conduct.”
If ”the President and his Cabinet” had consulted the Principia Club papers more, and Southern rebels less, it would not have taken them half of their Presidential term to learn that rebel promises are of no account whatever, for they would have discovered abundant evidence of their utter worthlessness. As ”federal bayonets” are now so popular in _rebel_ hands, and getting to be so useful to put down _Republicanism_ in South Carolina, perhaps our verdant President, in his ”_surprise_,”
may break the shackles with which he was voluntarily bound, and use ”federal bayonets” to put down _rebellion_. At all events, he ought to obey the United States Const.i.tution he has sworn to support, which tells him he ”shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government.” If he hasn't given away all his ”federal bayonets”
to the rebels, is it not about time for our commander-in-chief to use them in South Carolina? (See Principia Club Papers No. 7, pp. 152-5: The Southern Policy.)
[Special Despatch to the Boston Traveller.]
Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., Oct. 18.--The President has taken steps, through the proper officers, to have the outrage perpetrated at Sumter, South Carolina, investigated, with a view of ascertaining who is responsible, and whether or not there has not been an open violation of the United States laws.
District-Attorney Northrup has the case in charge, and will, said a member of the Cabinet to your correspondent to-day, make an energetic investigation of the outrage and report the facts promptly. There is no reason to doubt that he will do his whole duty and make a fearless investigation of the affair, which, according to the Democratic account, was brutal in the extreme. The Administration, said the Cabinet Minister further, will see that the rights of the colored people in South Carolina are maintained, and to this end will, if necessary, go to the full extent of the United States laws.
We may be too faithless in this matter, we hope we are, but when ”investigations” shall result in the _punishment of criminals_, instead of their protection from further molestation, we may have more confidence that justice will triumph in rebeldom.
VIRGINIA COMES NEXT.
”President Hayes, who is attending an agricultural fair at Winchester, Virginia, made a hard money speech yesterday, and quoted Was.h.i.+ngton, Jefferson, Madison, and other distinguished Virginians in favor of sound money.”--_Traveller, Oct. 17_.
While the President was making stump speeches in Winchester, in the direct line of civil service reform, as he understands it we suppose, the shot-gun brigade were at Hicksford demonstrating the fruits of his Southern policy. The ”Traveller” states this case in the following strain of sarcasm.
A ”saucy” negro was shot at Hicksford, Virginia, yesterday. It was a political meeting, of course. A Republican was speaking, and the negro had the audacity to applaud his sentiments. This was in the Court House.
A leader of the Democracy named Reese, not wis.h.i.+ng to soil the temple of justice with blood, called the negro out of the building and promptly shot him dead. There were four hundred colored men present and this shooting will be a lesson for them. They will now know better than to applaud Republican speakers, or vote a Republican ticket.
CONCLUSION.
We have thus spread out the present condition of the freedmen, before the American people. It is a plain case for the former, and not a hard one for the latter.
The whole question of emigration, as it now stands, lies in three propositions, one of which every freedman _must_ choose.
1. He must remain, as he is, under the political trinity of despotism; be denied the free ballot, conferred upon him by the amendments to the United States Const.i.tution; be forced to vote for the despotism that crushes him, already deserted by the government he fought to save, and which is const.i.tutionally bound to protect him in his political rights and Christian privileges; or,
2. He must, _vi et armis_, maintain those rights against rebel despotism, with the ”Federal bayonets” in rebel hands, and the power to send the army to the Indians or the devil; or,
3. He must, _quietly_, if he can, _forcibly_, if he must, emigrate to the public lands in the West, pre-empt a farm, and enjoy the rights of citizens.h.i.+p under a republican form of government, of which he is an integral part, and be represented in Congress by one elected by a majority of legal voters, and not by a minority of rebels, as is now the case in large Republican districts in the Southern States.
For obvious reasons, we pray the freedmen, in Christ's stead, to be reconciled to the last proposition, and in every county and town where their political rights are ignored by a rebel Democracy, let them form colonies under a chosen leader and emigrate West. If they cannot go without a.s.sistance, let that fact be communicated to us, and we will appeal to the people of the North to furnish them the means to do so.
It will be readily perceived that the converse of all this will be, that the landed aristocracy of the South must pay their laborers honest wages, recognize their const.i.tutional rights as citizens of this Republic, acknowledge the owners.h.i.+p of their capital, which means the fruits of their labor (land and labor being co-operative capital, neither being available or profitable without the other), or, otherwise, the land-owners must submit to the loss of their laborers by emigration, perform their own labor, or employ foreign emigrants.
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