The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-26 00:00:00

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211 E SOUTHERN DIFFICULTY

(From the Anglo -American Times.)

The news by mail from the State of Georgia
pointed towards a catastrophe, and the news by
Cable received on IVednesday announced what had
taken place. The telegram is dated New York, Sept.
22, and states that a battle had occurred which it
d,:signates a riot at Camidet, Georgia, between the
white Democrats and the black Radicals, when ,35
negroes were killed and 69 woun le, i on the one
side, with five whites kale 1 o i the other. The
Alabama Legislature, which met on the 16th
instant to pass a registry law, adopte I a resolution
begging the PRESIDENT to send troops to preserve
peace in the State, and singularly enough the mes-
sage was headed " Serious riot in Alabama." The
cause, as we observed, is explained by the mail
news already received. The "carpet-baggers" in
Georgia appear to have swung round the circle to
the 'side of the Secessionist; when both combined
to pass a resolution in the Representatives declar-
ing negroes ineligible for seats, or to hold office in
the State, and it was clear that the Senate would
follow the example. The negroes loft the house
after a hot debate, in which their leader displayed
considerable vigour and ability ; and BRADLEY,
the Boston negro lawyer, was furnished with a
substantial wrong whereon indignantly to harangue
his African brethren in Savannah. The intel-
ligence shows that the danger of a servile war
was not exaggerated, and when we come calmly to

• ang 'races' of—tiwSotrth. we can see
abundant reasons why the position might have been
anticipated. We must not forget whit the Nation
of September 10 at length explains, that the South-
erner is no more educated to work a free Govern-
ment than is a R issian or an Austrian. Political
life down South has hitherto beau a governing
party without an opposition ; the rule of a ruling
race, which met opposition by tarring and feather-
ing. The idea of arguing with any skunk that had
slunk from the Northern States to advocate the
rights of man, the vice of slavery, &c., never en-
tered into the mind of the Southerner. What he
did was was to ride Freedom's advocate on a rail, to
duck him, to tar him, to feather, to gag, to whip
him, and the leaders of what is called opinion iu the
South are those who from their childhood have seen
opinions antagonistic to those in which they were
educated thus met. That the negro found few cham-
pions where the championship was thus rewarded
may readily be believed, and the Southerner grew
up in the bigotry of a fixed belief in a doctrine it
was a crime deserving of summary punishment
to deny or in any way to oppose. He maintained his
creed with the ability of a statesman on the floor of
Congress, and with the unshrinking firmness of a
brave soldier on the field of battle ; and should we
be surprised that now when he is called upon not
only to endure the arguments of his opponents, but
actually to see his old negro slave seated in the ruling
Legislature, that he should feel a strong inclination
to resort to his former expedients of rail, whip, rope,
and pistol ? Yet this is only half the position.
Men have been elevated to power who but yesterday
were slaves, and he has but little knowledge of
human nature who supposes it to be possible that
the freedmen thus made can be proper recipients
for Legislative powers. If there could be a more
arrogant " cuss " than a despot it is a beggar on
horseback ; and we have here both placed in juxta-
position, which is merely charging the atmosphere
with electricity, and wondering at the thunder-
storm. That the Southern white has stood it so
long is due to the tremendous efforts which
so exhausted him in the war, when a tired, weary,
and disheartened man may have little inclination
for the physical exertion of riding his opponent ou
a rail. Men who have never been toned down by
an oppositien regard those who differ from them
politically as enemies whom it is a duty they owe
the community to suppress by any means open.
Thus Rome dealt with heretics ; and so Austria,
when ruling in Italy, suppressed political propa-
gandism. After the South began to recover from
the depressing influences of her defeat it was
natural for her to return to her old courses,
particularly when surrounded with so much to
provoke. There was the " carpet-bagger," a very
bad style of the skunk whom they formerly ducked
without mercy. More hateful still, there was the
" scallawag"—a traitor ! and behind these a mass
of their former slaves, it must indeed have required
no small exercise of an unwonted self-restraint not
to grasp them by the throat. The real power the
Southerner dreaded was one unseen though he did
not the less know its full force—public opinion in
the North; and it was in deference to it we fear
alone that the self-restraint was imposed. As the
Presidential election drew nigh this influence was
in a measure removed, and the intensity of the
rail-riding feeling increased. The deceptive enthu-
siasm which hailed the nominations of the New
York Convention encouraged the Southern leader to
speak out, and he did speak out, with something
like the effect of Mr. JOHNSON'S out-pourings in his
celebrated tour. An Indian Rajah who took part
in the Mutiny against the British, when condemned
to death, compared his position to one who had been
securely seated on a goodly bough of a flourishing
tree, whose own act had sawn off the branch whereon

he rested, and it appears impossible to seat the Sou-
therner on any branch that he will not thus saw off.
The moment the drift of political power in the
North is in his favour he works like a madman at a
dyke to turn the current aside. A Virginia paper
estimates the loss to the Democratic candidates of
one Southerner's speech at 200,000 votes, and all
of them combined, with the action of the Georgia
Legislature, the system of terrorism and political
assassination have rolled back the Democratic cur-
rent with a force astonishing to the rampant Radicals
wbo themselves were powerless to do it. The fight in
Georgia, the declaration of Gen.FonßEsT,and the open
announcement that the Ku-Klux-Klan is an orga-
nization embracing half a million men, will remove
from the Northern mind the chief objection to
GRANT, indeed turn his profession of arms into a
qualification. What may well cause surprise is
that one section of a people should so wholly mis-
understand the other, as the Southerners do the
Northerners. But ought this to surprise the
English, who after eight centuries of misrule of
Ireland, are only now beginning to understand
an island that they can almost see from their coast ;
and, it is a fact that people busy themselves more
in working out their own ideas and inclinations
than in studying those of their neighbours. This is
amusingly shown in conversation, where men prefer
to tell of their own experience, rather than to hear that
of their neighbour. But of this truth there can be
little doubt that the South has again interrupted the
tide of Democratic success ; and although we
never were deluded into the belief that it had the
depth many imagined, it was sufficiently strong if
skilfully engineered, and with great good fortune,
to end in success. It is easier for the Southern
leaders to announce principles and to profess con-
ciliation than to control the mean whites. It is not
from the LEES, theLONGSTREETS, theBEAUREGARDS,
or even the FORRESTS, that the danger comes, but
from the jealousy of men who in the enfranchise-
ment of the blacks have lost their great political
distinction, and in negro supremacy see a supe-
rior where but a short time ago they beheld
a slave. In whatever aspect it is regarded
the position is one which calls forth our liveliest
sympathies. First for the negroes, the uncon-
scious authors of the trouble, and we dread to
think its victims ; next for the Southerners, whose
fate he will so fatally have influenced ; and finally
for the United States, on which has fallen such au
avalanche of difficulties in the noble effort to en-
franchise millions of slaves.

The ratifications of the Naturalization Treaty
concluded between the United States and Bavaria, were
exchanged at Munich. Sept. 18, by Mr. Bancroft, the
~'%.nierican Minister, and Prince Hohenlohe, the Bavarian
Premier