The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1865-10-21

te meet at NORRIS. at =. O'Clock p. NJ, No
VENEER 22d prox, for the purpos of devising
means TO promote that object. Able speakers.
will address the Convention!
By order of the Grundy County Farmer S
Meeting.
WILLIAM BIRNEY. IsAC HoGE, r. X. SLos-
sey. q Z. GALUsHA, CHAs. TURNER, Com
More Practice in Questions and
Answers.
We must do the editors of the Ottawa
Republican the justice to say that they are
sufficiently outspoken and fat-footed for all
practical purposes in their answer to our
''Practice in Questions and Answers several
weeks ago. As we declined to answer their
questions about negro suffrage until they had
answered them themselves, they hasten to
answer distinctly and unequirocally, that they
do belong to the negro suffrage party and
are in favor of letting the negroes vote
everywheTe,-in Illinois as well as Alabama
and they maintain that the whole Republican
party is committed to the same issue,-in
Ohio. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, &c,
by inserting it in their platforms and voting
in favor of 1t at the late elections, which is
grossly untrue, for in all these states Except
Iowa they expressly lodged it; and in Hi
nois, where the Republican party, few years
ago, submitted the question of negro suffrage
10 the people and voted for it, which is again
untrue {; for the convention which submitted
that question to the people was Democratic
body, by large majority, and as negro suf-
frage was defeated by 10000 votes, it is plain
tine Republican patty did not vote for it. The
answer is good, however, SO far as the editors
of the RspubifcGn are concerned, and must
bind the party in this county. who accept the
Republican, as their organ. The Republicans
of this county stand, then, On the negro suf>
frage platform: how do the soldiers like it?
The prompt candor of these editors de-
serves like candor in return. Distinctly, then,
W. are not in favor of negro suffrage in Hi
nois The national government having in
veigled the negro into the army, where he
was used more to manufacture abolition cap
ital than to fight rebels, justice NAV some
day requins that few negroes be admitted
to suffrage in this state, on the score of mill
tary service, intelligence, and paying taxes;
but as for universal negro suffrage in Illinois,
we are decidedly in favor of letting the
women vote first. They are ten times better
qualified than the mass of negroes.
Bat to forcing negro suffrage on Ala
hama, or the south, against their will, there
never was proposition more foolish or i'm
pudent We are opposed to it toto cccio. 1t
confessediy sets the constitution at open de-
iance and is throughout a piece of that
most despicable of all Observation-Disclosures
ding with other peoples affairs. The negro
in the south is in state Of probation. The
question is, will he work ? The vast cotton
fields and sugar plantations of the South
must be TILED, or the whole land becomes a
bowling wilderness. These big plantations
viii, under the free labor system, be cut up
into small farms, and worked as farms are at
the North. Men of small capital will own
them, and each owner will hire few hands,
as our farmers do. These hands, in turn,
will get = little money, and themselves buy
small farms of their own, and hire their help.
Who viii constitute this hired help? viii
they be Germans, Irishmen, Swiss, Norwe-
gianS &c, or will they be negroes q? If the
negro is disposed to be industrious and
frugal, he may occupy this field; and then,
with the school houses around him, he will
become intelligent and respectable, and in a
few years fit to vote. If, on the other hand,
his constitutional Incidence and thriftlessness
clfnes to him, and the cotton and sugar
planters of the South must hire white hands
en- their limited acres, then, as sure as the
day comes, The negro Will either be crowded
ont, OF he must rise and kill off the white
man, as he did in St. Domingo. One of
these results is inevitable. If the negro
becopies the hired help of tho southern
farmer, and then the small farmer himself,
the people of Alabama have as keen an ap-
preciafien OF what is just and right As the
Pharisees Of Massachusetts have, and viii
do what is right; but if, on the other hand,
the negro, by his thriftlessness and Incidence,
brings upon himself the irrepressiblc conflict
between himself and the white race, then the
idea of the whites comforting upon him
suffrage, is ridiculous-the dream of fanat;-
cal fool
Tsis.wlole business of forcing negro sui,
frage oa the South is based on the assump-
ton that the South is still rebellious al heart,
are not TO be trusted with their own affairs,
aIAl mast be fuyther degraded, Inundated
ahd punished. Such policy woul not only
crush the South, but brutalize the North and
ruin the nation. No sane man fears that
the South Will again take up arms. They
Would not if they could, and could Motif they
was,i. All our differences with the South
mus. hereafter be differences of opinion,
which must be allowed to have peaceable
expression. To gag the South, and keep
them under the surveillance and tutelage of
tAes general government, is to make them
,l1ves and tsrn us into a nation of slaves
holIecs. Ater-sucb a tutelage the South
~. ~ ,l1e unfit to he free-the North would
he unwilling that she should be free, and
both sections would be brutalized and ruined, /.
Is slavery ever ruins the master as well as
Ii. Shave Why not let the South go on and
reconstruct themselves? What harm can
their opinions do us, slavery being abolished
81 Che nation, and the North beng IN such /
g. overwhelming majority? How can we
Z 0 >, 81 ,hern? Has there not been enough |
misery occasioned? Must we go on destroy
y Crushing, Devastating, when they are
asre-.iy hum4led and at our feet? Are We
nessr u he penetrated by any Christian