Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1860-10-04

pecially to the negro. They stigmatized
merchants of independent political opinions;
and pstronized the Southern papers which
published black lists of Northern dealers and
manufacturers who were unsound on the
negro question. The Atlanta (Ga.) Colted-
eraey had an editor resident at New York
especially for this chivalrous business. The
Richmond Enquirer had a correspondent
travelling among the Connecticut manufac-
turers, reporting on their political views.
New York merchants got up pretentious po-
litical meetings. at the Academy Of Music, and
feed Charles 0'Connor to show the Prov
idential status of the negro, and sent their
drummers and porters to disturb Republican
meetings.
This state of affairs was harvest for the
South, and there are no people who so well
understand how to combine thrift with po-
litical excitement. There are certain tradi-
tions which exist as if they were original ell
ements, having neither beginning nor end,
and entirely self lfexisting. Among these are
the ideas that sharpness for money is north
eastern trait, and generosity and free expend-
iture a Southern trait. They are pleasing
delusions. 1t is queer feature in our philos-
ophy that a people whose standing fauaticsm
is founded on a material interest, should be
the class which is set up as being indiffer-
ent to profits while a section which is
fanatical on isms, but remotely, if at all,
connected with their interest should be set
down as governed solely by money. Travel,
and observation of the mingling of the differ
ent sections at the capital and large cities,
will show that humanity has a common
starting point, and that the virtues of ben
evidence, generosity, hospitality, and per-
sonal honor, are, like their counterparts
governed and developed in ratio to the gem
eral intelligence, civilization, education and
social culture, of the people. The progress
of civilization would be impossible if this
were not so.
This reign of fear and funkeyism over the
New York merchants was like providential
mama to the doubtful and insolvent among
the traders of the South, and they improved
it. Starving papers, like the Atlanta Con-
.5ederdey, of two or three hundred circulation
and no brains, and which, if left to their own
resources, would never be heard from out of
their own county, had editors residing at
frst-class hotels in New York, or corre-
spondents travelling among Northern mer-
chants and manufacturers, and living in
clover. Southern country editors, who left
home as shabby and lean as the apothecary
in Romeo, put flesh and good clothes on their
bones, by merely registering themselves at
Northern hotels as editors of the Southern
Screaner, or the Southern Coaederdey.
The lordly airs with which insolvent and
beggarly sharpers from the South, required
to know the political views of the merchants
of Pearl and Murray-streets, before they
could consent to make bill, were overpow-
ering. How could a New Yorker presume
to question the responsibility of South
erner who owned so large an interest in the
rights of the South? Shall men who have
in charge the sacred interests of the whole
South, be questioned as to their response
bility for q paltry bill of few thousand
dollars worth of dry goods? Why it would
be an attack upon Southern institutions
1t would prove at once that the merchant
was an incendiary enemy to the rights of
the South, and John Brown Republican,
who would light the torch of servile war.
The thing worked beautifully. The
Southern trade was never so large, and as
the Northwest was suffering from short
crops, and limited its purchases to what it
expected 20 pay for, the prosperity of the
Southern dealers was contrasted with the
limited business of those in the Western
trade, and was vaunted as the reward of
true, national, Southern, Union-loving prin-
ciples. The New York Herald proclaimed
that the Northwest was of no account, and
that the Southern trade was the only trade
worth having. The Journal of Commerce
improved the occasion to show how Provi-
dence smiled on national principles and
frowned on Blaek-Republican traders.
But payment is an essential feature of a
prosperous trade. The time of payment for
this flush time prosperity has come round,
and the New York merchants, who reaped
the greatest harvest from their national
principles, are asking extensions on their
liabilities. Sound political views will not
meet notes, and the customers, who were
30 careful of Southern rights in their pur-
chases, are quite careless about meeting
their bills. The crop of cotton is said to be
short. No serious shortness has yet been
established; certainly none to effect general
credit. Besides the old crop is not yet ex-
hausted, and no returns are expected from
the new for some time, while bills have been
coming back to New York from the South
protested, so that some of the New York
merchants have had time TO exhaust the
various financial shifts, and have been com
PEELED to make an arrangement with their
creditors. The anticipated deficiency of the
present crop will not account for this, nor
need a moderate deficiency in crop, so
profitable as cotton, produce a financial
crisis among solvent Southern men. 1t is
probable that the New York merchants have
mercantile shrewdness and eau
tion to negro funkeyism, and have given
large credits to men who had no credit at
home.
But now the question of payment has also
become political. Why not, when the pur-
chase was2 The election of Lincoln is
talked of as a general Quittance of Southern