Charles City intelligencer. [volume] (Charles City, Floyd County, Iowa) 1864-1866, 1865-10-19
'ddsstharb tbs Courst Of Gupirt takts its @ap."
rY, FLOYD COUNTY, IOWA. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 1865


Everything has been offered for their
acceptance, but they make no bid
they give no sign of hopeful life. The
Government would be too happy to
transfer into their keeping the civil
power Of the Southern States but
they send out no representative men
nobody but their old rulers come for
ward in response to our call. What
are they about? Their day has dawn
ed and they seem to be asleep. From
Virginia, for example, we sometimes
hear that they get mp riot or kill a
negro but where are their gatherings
to consider the signs of the times, and
to act independently, and if need be,
in opposition to the ancient Lords of
the Lash? A dreary silence reigns
throughout the region Of the poor
whites, broken only by the report of a
musket shot as a murdered freedman
falls. ... ........... .......-..5....
Everywhere we hear that the ne.
groes are flocking to school tottling
children, mothers with their babes at
their breasts, workingmen after their
days toll is over, aged prtrisrchs and
white-headed grandames-all may be
seen poring over their primers wherev-
er the Teachers of the Freedmen's Aid
Societies are stationed. They learn
with wonderful rapidly. This is the
uniform report--from Louisiana and
Virginia, from Tennessee and the
Carolinas. Their eagerness to learn
has been described as " almost dis
ease. There is no checking it, no con-
trolling it it is as fierce as fever at
its hight"
Meanwhile, neither the adult poor
whites nor their children show any
such propensities. Their stolid apathy
not even the artillery of contending
armies has dispelled. As they Were
in the bad old times, they are now in
the holy era that has dawned on our
land. They are as lazy and listless,
as inert and abject as ever. Every ig-
norant class is dangerous class and
the history Of the last generation and
especially of the war, has shown how
very dangerous people the poor
whites are. For, by their lack of in
tclligence, an oligarchy has ruled the
South from time immemorial 4; and
when its time for rebellion came, they
were driven, like sheep to the slaugh-
ter, to fight against every earthly in
terest of their class and nation.
How profound the ignorance of the
poor whites is, it required this war to
expose. Our soldiers stood aghast at
it-and at the amazing immoralities
that gathered around it. Everywhere
adulterous miscegenation, incestuous
marriages, indiscriminate and univer-
sal impurity we're fonnd hand and hand
with stolid stupidity, listless hope
lessness, and a darkness of mind of
which, happily, the North knows moth
ing but by report. Statistics are in
adequate to describe it. For, what
avails it to say that there must be to-
day One Hundred Thousand adults in
Virginia who can neither read nor
write? There were $500 by the Gen.
sus of 1850. But man who can nei-
ther read nor write may be thrifty,
prudent, ambitious and have fully de-
veloped his common sense and his hab-
its Of industry he may be competent
todiscriminate between rival platforms,
not resolution Of which he could
copy or spell out. Not so with the
poor white trash.