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 same class are now in
hot haste to have the United States Constitution made to conform to
their own State laws, by the repeal of the amendments enfranchising the
freedmen,--a specimen of sharp practice and unparalleled audacity, only
equalled in the papal church, where the hierarchy made their system, and
then a translation of the Bible to fit into it, instead of making a
system to conform to the Bible, as originally written. (See Vaticanism
Unmasked.)
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 dined according to the present moral code of
the solid South, which is being copied all over the country.
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.)