Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1866-05-16

Deen a curse TO us all, bringing nre ana
sword, desolation and death, not only upon
1tiehpond, but upon every extremity of
the State. ..,.
If we earnestly consider the origin. and
inquire into the,causes Of our calamities;
il we ask why pur,rivers, like ancient Nile,
run blood? why have we. like the Egyptians,
been overwhelmed in Red sea, while we
were trying to prevent ourselves from
escaping to a land of freedom why have
our tirst-born been cut down by teps OF
thousands, until the voice of mourning and
lamontation fills the land as it once did the
land of Pharaoh? why have we suffered so
many plaques as once visited the proud and
stubborn oppressOrs of the old lsraelities
we shall find the answer to be, because, in
the language of reason and philosophy, we
have made war upon the rights of human
nature. Or, in the language Of the old He
brews, because we have oppressed the poor,
and because the God of the poor Is deter
mined to write, with His own hand, His alb
horrence of slavery and oppression all over
our land, in characters so legible that
neither we, nor our children's children, can
ever mistake His MUD and will in coming
generations. ,lr. s..-r.. ... .r......T
To ourshame and disgrace it must be ad-
mitted that, so far as we are advised, every
one of the numerous conflicts of races which
have occurred in this State during the past
year has been the wanton and uuprovoked
work OF wicked white men upon poor, quiet,
unottending, and, in most cases, unarmed
and unresisting colored people. Why
should we murder, rob and interrupt them;
burn their school houses and churches; in
suit and attack the teachers, who, in the
cause of Improvement and elevation ard
Christian charity, have come to us from the
ever friendly North, in the same spirit that
brought them in 1865, to this devoted city,
when the scOurge of yellow fever was here
in its wraths Let US not forget that then,
as now, it was to the North and it's generous
people that we had to look in our want for
aid and assistance. Unless stop is put to
such violence and outrage upon the freed
men, we can never expect relief from the
presence OF Northern bayonets. and admis-
sion to the rights and privileges of the Fed
eral Union; but we shall become the by
word and scorn of the whole civilized
world. We shall be considered barbarians,
and be justly excluded from the sympathies
of all Christian men 1t is your duty, gen
tlemen of the jury, to see to it that Il peO-
pie who were loyal and true to the Nations
flag in time Of trial and danger shall be
protected against the persecution of those
who, fresh from scenes of treason and re-
bellion, are pursuing their victims with
most internal hate, for no apparent reason,
except their fidelity and devotion to the
country. .T. . .......
We fully appreciate the magnitude and
difficulty of the task set before you. The
mOnstTOus wrong with which You are call
ed to grapple, like the giant Hydra, still
lifts some of its many heads, which YOU
must strike down, or they will continue to
disturb the public tranquility. 1t would
be childish to expect that so great an ini-
guilty could be eXtTpated in a single year,
or even in single generation. 1t should be
remembered that it had invaded every
source of public, private, social and domes-
tic life. Not only did it control the politi-
cal press and all political parties in the
State, but, with rare exceptions, it spoke
from all our pulpitS, perverting the gospel
of human brotherhood into the gospel of
human chattelhood, and of the absolute
submission of apart to the lust and ava
rice of the rest of the human Kind. Our
religious teachers had forgotten to preach
the wrong of Withholding the hire of labor,
trading in the bodies and souls OF our fell
low men, of separating husbands and wives,
parents and children, and sending them to
areturnless distance from each other, and
from the homes of their living and the
graves of their dead; and had become, with
some worthy and glorious exceptions, pam
derers and apologists of the lust and Yio-
lence of the masters who in return for their
services were willing to feed them on the
fat of the land. Our Legislators, instead of
following the Christian law requiring much
where much is, given, and prOpOrtioning
accountability to the gifts and talents of
nature, had established the reverse enact
ments, Furnishing the ignorant and unedu-
Gated, whom it was made crime TO en-
nh
which, when committed by the edncated
and privileged, we're satisfied with fine or
Imprisonment. Our courts of justice had
proclaimed the Infamous doctrine that
dusky men had no rights which White men
were bound to respect; and into this very
temple of law pious woman had been
dragged as a criminal, Tor ali act which
might almost invite an archangel to come
down from the mansions of the blest, for
teaching the poor children of oppression
aud of licensed wrong to read the Bible,
and the laws made not to govern them, but
to crush out OF them every feeling OF hu-
manity.
And worst of all and most to be de-
plOred" was the prostitution of our homes,
the very heart and seat of domestic purity,
the poisoning OF which is fatal to all moral
vitality and death to public and private
happiness. The subjectiOn of the women
of one complexion to the wild tury1of un-i
bridled RIGHTEOUSNESS, and as a consequences
denying t. the women of our own complex
ion the holy rites of marriage, or making in
thousands of cases those rites as much a
mockery as conscious traitors oath, are
proclaimed on every plantation in the
bleached faces of the children of the slave
women, bleached by the blood of the first
families, until hardly halt our births were
of lawful wedlock aud until it would seem
that masculine virtue must be nearly eX-
| tinct in the proud circles of the chivalric
aristocracy of the State. .#
Your duties under these circumstances
are both difficult and dangerous, iOrgyou
are called upon to oppose the worst pas
sions of very desperate men, who win make
vigorous efforts verify their often repeat
ed predictions, that freedom would bring
ruin and .eXJermination upon the colored
people, and tits possible That some of you
may meet with Violence for a faithful dis
dllarge of your duties, as one of Che last
Grand JurythAs already done. But better,
Thousand times better, to fall by the hand
oftbe. assassin, as Lincoln and Dixon have
fallen, or die under the lliockery of pretend
ed forms of law, as our Savior did, inJthe
cause of freedom and humanity, than to
shrink like towards from our public trusts,
| inorder to drag out few more years OF
! ighoble lie before filling unhonored graves.
The laws of Congress which will guide
your action are Instinct with equity aaiid
are ample,s .ifg fearlesslyI dmipistered,, to
tcheck the humble and most defiant difterz
ing essentially in this respect from the laws
of our State Legislature, which. like those
of an anciehti heathen nation seem !" like