The Burlington weekly hawk-eye. [volume] (Burlington [Iowa]) 1860-1876, 1862-06-28

\ FrssA Visitation OF tho. BLACK

- Fkeo2 Visitation OF tho. Black Horror
Somebody In Chester County, Pa, it il said,
has hired niger at ten cents a day. Nobody.
We suppose, will blame the niger. He had
worked oil bis life on q plantation for nothing,
and ten cents in his eyes are now probably
larger than Fifty will be year hence. The
wonder is that he would hire for labor at all !;
tor it has been dinned into our ears these many
years. by those who profess to have An intimate
of the animal, that he would not
work if lief! to himself, but would be losfng
yagabond and candidate for the jail and poor
house, az all his fathers we're. Ten cents, too,
is about the figure that an eminent Democratic
statesman and e1-President once thought would
be q fair compensation for days work; and it
only goes to show the coincidence of conclusions
between the white and black idols of those who
are now laboring to restore the party that made
President of the one, and by encouraging Sc.
cession, free man of the other. If the niger
IL too poor to support q name, or if bis parents
were too impoverished to supply him with .
Carlstian appelation, We submit whether it
would be inappropriate to confer upon him the
title of "Ten-cens jimmy"
1t ls amusing to observe how the nigger affects
the nerves of these selfconstituted guardians Of
the industry, morals, politics and civilization of
mankind. They were in the deepest distress
but little while ago, for fear the niger, es-
Gaping through the lines of the ARMY and making
his way into the free States, should refuse to
work, and become tax upon an industrious
population. Any allusion to the subject sent
them into rhetoric convulsions. They spouted
like town pump they searched the
dockets of criminal courts, Jail registers, and
pauper-house records for fgures-all to prove
that Cuffee was constitutionsily lazy and inhe-
rently vicious; and they saw in prospective
cloud OF Cutfses coming up over the land like
the locusts of Egypt, to devour every green
thing and eat out the substance of the people.
-, Well-Cuffee has come. We hear Of him in
Chester county. The shocking tramp of his
plantation shoes along the banks of the Della
ware is loud enough to be heard from the ARGOS
took to the Missouri. But he isn't the idle, loaf
ing vagabond that We expected. He don't ap-
pear to relish the dependence of the pauper, or
look upon the jail and the work.house as among
his "inalenable rights" Strange to say, b
wants work. His rags and his poverty advertise
his necessities, and some fat aud well-to.do farm
er, taking advantage Of his condition, employs
him at ten cents = day. The nigger would,
probably, have accepted fifty cents or dollar
with Christian resignation, but nobody offered
that He had no choice. A nigger's wants
very much resemble those of white man, not
the pigment in his epidermis and
his tendency to capillary kinks. He must have
bread for his hunger, clothing for his nakedness,
and shelter for his body; and they cost money.
Or course this preverse faulty on the part of
the niger to work, when left to himself, explo.
ded a tavorite political theory. There were ar
guments we'll shaped, facts patiently collected,
and figures of speech laboriously polished,
heavy stock in trade of politicians, when the
mysterious blach-hued and contraoand niger
constructed at great expense and with infinite
labor on Virginia plantation, bears down on
them, rips up the arguments, skaters the facts,
destroys the figure of speech, and knocks the
mbering material for stump speeches and heavy
leaders into cooked hat.
The Merrimac of the Virginia Navy Yard
didn't produce more prodigious revolution than
the piratical continuance of Virginia planta
ton is now accomplishing. Those who insisted
that the niger was constitutional dawdler
and loafer, are now seized with bloody sweat
lest he overtop them intellectually and physical
ly. Apprehension that the niger might be an
anproductive consumer, is suddenly changed in
to CONSERVATION lest he become competing
producer. The author of Pulpit Politics and
engineer Of the National Democratic League in
to the bowels of Hamilton County Democracy,
with penetration into the future equa! to : |
steam drill, foresaw aad predicted this. he
piled his statistics and rhetoric vigorously, we
might almost say turiously, to arouse an apathet.
ic and short.sighted people. The horrible phan-
tasmagoria Of an aggravated contrabsnd, with |
the muscle of Ca!ban aud the appetite of Death
coming up over the North to wress employment
from the mechanic and bread from the mouths
Of his furnishing children, was ever before him.
BE has come! The shadow of his plantation
hat, and the prints of his elongated heels are
seen upon the soil Of Chester county. He doesn't
sigh in the language of pathetic ballad. sup
posed to represent the feelings of an exiled ebo
shin, to be carried back to old Virginia, nor
with the patriarchial Uncle Edward, whose want
of incisors and molars prevented his eating the
corn cake, does he express any desire to lay
down the shovel and the Eoe. On the contrary
he takes these agricultural implements up, with
the small remuneration of ten cents day as his
motive.
This bucoic tendency on his part, has created
a tremendous uproar. The excitement and con.
fusion Of tongues over the White House, on the
Pamunkey, is a teapot tempest, compared with
the agitation over the Black Horror of Chester
county. Men, reasonably sane upon other sub.
ects, are afflicted with portentious fears of their
ncapacity to keep ahead of the niger. They
profess to think, and We suppose they must have
good for 1t, that there is real danger that
ne will become their equal. Confidence in their
ability to hold him under by their own inherent
vgor of intellect and muscle has oozed out, and
We have the remarkable spectacle presented US:
Of men, favored with all the advantages of re
Element and civilization, confessing to the world
\ weakness of which they should be ashamed,
md fear, that with all the disadvantages of
ignorance and poverty, and au iron reiudice |
keeping him ignorant and poor. the Niger will !
'upplart them as producers, and force himself
Up to an equality with themselves. Else why
III this clamor and outcrye Is it the cant Of
hypocrisy? Is it done in the interest of a pal.
ocular party? Is it to further projects OF Der.
,onal preferments Is it au insincere profession
If apprehensions not felt' Is this Virginia con.
.raband the author of real and imaginary woes, |
hat these men go bowling about the streets, and
ezing every one they can compel to listen by
he button-hole, with chattering teeth and skin.
~ fingers, point il the direction of Chester
county, and whisper in his ear, ''beware of the
cn cent nigger!"
W. Louo no& tive far boon Ill. 4.