The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1865-07-06

was read with so much JUNCTION to many
thousand people in all portions of the United
States last Tuesday. The American people
generally, profess to venerate the patriotism
and the wisdom of our Revolutionary fathers
and especially of those noble representatives
of the people of that day who affixed theil
signatures to the Declaration of Independ
ence. And yet, for years past, a portion Of
the people, and especially party leaders, have
exercised their utmost ingenuity and industry
in inventing epithets of denunciation and vii
lihcation of all who have insisted on that doc
trine of our fathers which declares that all
men are entitled to liberty and now this
same class of persons, since liberty has been
secured by the fortunes of war, are directing
their energies to fulminations of personal
abuse against those who have the audacity to
assert, with our fathers, that all men are
created equal, and to claim as a corollary
thereof, and in perfect accordance with sub
sequent passages of that same Declaration OF
Independence, that all men are entitled to a
voice in the formation and direction of the
Government which is to rule over them.
Our fathers laid down general propositions
based on the eternal principles of right, and
the more they are studied the more important,
truthful and brilliant they appear.
EeuALIrr is the very fundamental princi-
pie, the rallyingcry of the champions Of free
government in all climes and in all ages OF
the world Where it does not exist as a gen
eral characteristic, we may have oligarchies
and aristocracies like those of Greece and
Rome, but there can be no true republic.
But if those in this day and age of the world
who advocate this equality" which our
fathers declared to be that of all men by Gre
alton, are to be denounced as infamous, an
stgmatised as amalgamationists and misce-
genationists, what terms of opprobrium ought
not to be heaped upon those who held it
seifevident truth, and so published in SOL
emn declaration to the world, which they
pledged fortune, life and honor to support
Now, we take it that when our fathers de-
clared that all men were created equal and
entitled to liberty, that they did not thereby
in their bed, or with their wives and daughters,
nor that the negro's complexion was as
white as theirs, nor that he was of the sane
stature, weight, intelligence, wealth or social
position. Nor do those who assert our faith
ers' principles nowadays mean any such
thing. Neither we nor our fathers ever con-
tended for any such equality as demands this
freedom of social intercourse, which is con-
stantly harped upon to arouse p 'ejudice and
hatred, by fools and demagogues.
We do mean that God created all men with
an equality of rights, to enjoy whatever may
have been received from the bounty of God
or acquired by his own exertions. And hence,
if in state of nature and living upon the
same territory were found black men and
white men, we hold the blacks, even should
they be the more numerous and the stronger.
have no right, in violation Of this doctrine of
the equal rights Of all men, to form q govern
ment over such common territory, and to
exclude the white men from any voice in the
formation of such government, or in the
choice of those who shall make its laws and
garry it on. And e the black men, being in
the majority, have no right to do SO with
ont the white mems consent, if all are equal
IN the matter of right, it is difficult to see how
white men could justly do the same thing.
y NV, it is clear, We think, to the dullest
arfehension, that freeing the slaves has not
H<0duced "negro equality nor promoted
any tendency to amalgamation or miscegena-
ton. notwithstanding the confident and oft
repeated assertions of the Copperheads to the
contrary. And if the Copperheads have
proved false prophets and utterly unworthy of
confidence or trust on that point, as they
have on all others relating to the war, is it
not perfectly safe to infer that they are equal
" wrong in their assertion that the exercise
Of the right of suffrage by the negroes will
make the negro equal to the white man in
condition and social position? Negroes have
exercised the right of suffrage in New York
ard in some of the New England States for
years, and years ago they were accustomed
to exercise the right of suffrage in several of
the Southern States, but that fact never led to
s'negro equality in any offensive sense. Ne
groes in our own State are allowed to testify
in our Courts, are requested to pay taxes and
are held to an equal liability to "the draft !"
with white men, but we have seen no growing
evidence of negro equality, no increase of
arnalgamation or miscegenation, nor have we
found him promoted to condition of So
cial equality in consequence of his escape
from bondage. He has simply the enjoyment
of the equal right of liberty, and were he
silowed to vote he would simply enjoy his
right to the ballot under the Government to
which he owes his allegiance and which under
the laws he is held to support by his money
and his blood.
TREarNExr OF NEGRoEs-The order Of
Gen. Terry, providing for the decent treatment
of nesres in Virginia, is very distAsteful to the
slase-breeding gentry, whose occupation is
Npne. The Richmond Rep.blic significantly
6uaxin:
~ important order must be accepted as
he qoG3cnl reuln Of the war, however
~ ~ ~ apf our society. 1t is q
o1Sy 1sected to military men,
- ~ = 11mpu4afy in its application
y 1lfH nov be vSrv soon estsb-