"If colored people are willing to become Democrats in good faith, it
will require grave deliberation to determine whether it is not wiser to
let them in, and give them a voice in the party, than to leave them
outside as a bait for Independent Democrats. The Independent, not the
colored Democrat, is the rock ahead in South Carolina politics."
The "News" is willing to allow negroes to act in the Democratic party,
it seems, solely because the colored vote may thereby be controlled. It
does not concede their right to vote, and to vote as they may choose,
but it realizes that some of them will vote, notwithstanding the
opposition of the Spartan school of Democracy, and seeking to have that
vote controlled in the interests of the party, it is willing to have it
understood by the negroes that they will find no obstacles in the way of
their voting, if they unite with the Democratic party. The same end is
sought by the "Spartan" and by the "News." The first-named wishes to
secure the supremacy of a race by preventing the negroes from voting,
while the "News" thinks it a better policy to adopt measures for the
control of their votes. The "News" is no more friendly to the colored
men than its contemporary, and the policy it proposes is as dangerous to
their rights, as that of those who, in an outspoken manner, tell the
negroes they are entitled to no political privileges.
PLAIN TALK.--The Providence "Journal" says: "The stipulations to which
the Southern States solemnly pledged themselves, as the conditions of
restoration to their forfeited rights in the Union, and to their
readmission to a share in the government which they had attempted to
overthrow, have been shamelessly violated. The negro is not permitted to
vote unless he is frightened into voting the Democratic ticket. He has
practically 'no rights which a white man is bound to respect.' In some
of these States a sort of peonage has been established, which differs
from slavery mainly in the exemption of the master from the care of the
slave in sickness and old age, and in all of them disqualifying laws,
and still more disqualifying practices under the laws, prevail. History
presents no parallel to the forbearance shown by the conquering party in
the rebellion, and none to the perfidy of the party that was overcome."
A leading paper in the State of Senator Gordon--the Columbus
"Enquirer-Sun,"--thus favors the lynch law: "A good, able-bodied,
healthy corpse, or even a slightly damaged one, dangling from the limb
of a tree on a public highway, strikes more terror into the heart of a
criminal, and creates more respect for the fiat of justice, than the
inside of a thousand jails, or the presence of an army of judges and
jurymen. There is an appalling grandeur, a horrifying sublimity in the
spectacle of a ghastly, half-devoured human form suspended in mid-air,
receiving alike unconsciously the refreshing drops of the nocturnal dew
that gives life to the violets, or the glowing rays of the morning sun
as it ascends the eastern horizon and beams smilingly down on a busy
world."
Which is correct? Here is Representative Waddell of North Carolina,
formerly a rebel general, telling an organization of Union veterans,
that not one person in one hundred thousand in the South expects or
desires compensation for property destroyed by the Union armies, and
here is ex-editor Cheney of Lebanon, who has travelled through the South
and sojourned in Florida, saying: "You meet with no man in the South who
does not either earnestly assert the justice of these claims, or leave
with you the impression that he hopes they will be paid, because such
payment means more money and greater prosperity for the South. Even the
negroes, when it comes to the test, will be found co-operating with
their masters to secure compensation for their own freedom." We repeat
our question, Which is correct?--_Concord Monitor_.