New-York daily tribune., 1865-10-05
MuAT,A IN A NAME,

Word, are sometimes things. II was, doubt
less. q point Of convenience to distinguish, by
some marked appellation, those persons who
had passed from servitude to liberty. They
were freed,sen. j. G. men freed, and sowe called
them. But in doing this we unconsciously
blundered into tie very mischief which we
were seeking TO avoid; for while We abrogated
one class distinction. we created another. We
stopped the stripes but We LEFT the stigma. In
so doing We kept the door open for continu-
ance Of class legislation; and the Old arlSlo-
Gratis. whose hearts had been heavy with the
loss of personal privileges, with oil the shreYd-
aes. OF an abiding selhshncss. saw at once the
advantage which the distinction gave them.
As our Nashville (Tenn.) correspondent re-
Gently Observed "The word freedman has
very little significance, if State Legislature,
by legal enactment can keep those same freed
men in a condition Of perpetual pupilagc.
PERHAPS II would be speaking more
accurately to say that under such con-
significance Of very bad kind. For
unless it shall De honestly recognized By the
manufacturers of lew that Freed Man Is also
q Free Man-iust as free as if God had never
cursed Canaan-jGst a. free rs If his ancestors
had never been stolen from Africa, but had
cmigrated to this continent out OF as pure Volt
ton as the Pigrims-just rs free as if his grand
fatler had never been sold, his grandmother
never debauchcd, his mother never divorced by
An auctoneer, his father never hogged and
lpickled-unless all this shall bc honestly
recognized, We shall have the statute book of
every reconstructed State stuffed full Of diabol-
ical distinctions and damnable enactments,
! framed with prepenSc malice, expressly to
crush out the manhood of the new class, to
make its industry profitable only to others and
never TO Itself, to make law, so far aS the redress
of grievances shall be concerned, of no value
to the majority, and generally to keep the
whole machinery Of the State working
at the cost Of the many for the benefit
of tho few. The spirit OF caste which
able features of Slavery, will be more rampant
than ever. TIE White may teazc the Black or
the Yellow as a child teazes flies. The Freed
man may do this, and may not do that he
may follow this profession, but he must avoid
the other; he may be witness in certain
class of suits and incompetent in all other
classes or incompetent altogether; he may
marry, trade, travel, work, hold real property
upon certain conditions, and upon those con.
ditions only; he may be considered guilty Of
flat felony for ohenses which, in Whites, arc
reckoned only as misdemeanors; he may bc
obstructed in the exercise of his religion, hin.
dered in the education of his children, ham.
pered in the disposition of his cstate-and all
because he u Freed Man and not Free
Man He may be made as wretched as Jew
in Rome. He may find that he has only cx-
changed the Slavery Of the nineteenth century
for the vllenage of tho twelfth, and all the
consolation left him will be that he has fine,
new name!
OF course, such condition of things a. this
could not last forever, nor would it be superilu-
ouSy comfortable during its continuance. 1t
would not only render society insecure, and the
supply of labor uncertain and inadA nate at the
South, but it would keep in full activity of pro-
test and denunciation at the North all those
who having believed Slavery to be shameful
wrong and bitter folly would not be disposed
to acquiesce in a perpctuaton Of the reehris.
tened crime. We should be compelled to enter
upon new era of agitation in defense OF those
TO whom our proteotion ia pledged BY every
dictate of humanity and b. every sentiment Of