Bradford reporter. [volume] (Towanda, Pa.) 1844-1884, 1866-09-20


youth the flower of Northern families, the
hope of thousand hearts, graduated there
where they were taught such lessons OF
Southern brutality and wrong. Yes, Mr.
BEEcHER, JEFFERSON DAVIS and ROBERT LEE,
and others famed in Southern colleges, have
inculcated a lesson American young men
can never forget, and it only remains that
you volunteer your valuable assistance to
stamp it indelibly upon their memory a
memento through all time to come of the
worthy trio to whom the youth OF our coun-
try are under such lasting obligations
They are already acting upou the wisdom
thus acquired in Southern schools All over
the land in the East and the West, in the
North and the South they are rushing in a
thousand streams of animated and indig-
nant life, through thousand channels, to
the great tryst in October and November.
A million voices are uplifted to honor the
flag of the Union, and a million hearts are
beating in unison with the call Congress
has sounded to the rescue. "To your tents,
0 Israel"
You say ait is fit that the brave men,
who, on sea and land, faced death to save
the nation, should now, by their voice and
vote, consummate what their swords rem
dered possible" 1t is most fit, most wor-
thy and astute BEEcHER,-that sounds more
like-most fit and most right it is but
look you, Reverend Sir, that is not what you
have all along been telling US, in this let
ter, but the reverse. How, if Southern
members are at once admitted to vote
against the Constitutional Amendment, are
the soldiers of the war, deprived today of
the suffrage, to acquire it? You want the
soldier to vote, you say, and you want
somebody to say he shan't vote This may
be BEECHER logic, but it is not the logic OF
a straight forward, honest, statesman If
you are dying for universal suffrage, as you
pretend to be, throw your great influence
against this vampire y'cleped "My Policy"
that will grow fat upon your name and fame
when you are in heaven.
1t is most fit, bully for you, Mr. BEEcHER
AS you have joined the slang party take
little of their slang. Bully for you again.
Most fit " indeed, how come you to say
it +? After long column of sophistry to
break right into the the truth at dash
it takes our breath
Republicans never had doubt of it, new
er, that those who have faced death upon
the battlefield should nouU by their Uoice
and cote consummate finish, finish up, so
that it will stay finished, conclude, SO that
no art, sophistry, cunning, deceit, wiring
in and wiring out of Southern politicians
and Northern doughfaces can deny what
their swords have rendered possible. Give
| them that voice and vote and the country
is saved.
And it is only right-it is no gift we
make to the soldier, it is no boon we con-
fer 1t is his right, his, by virtue of his man,
hood, his patriotism, his courage, his sacri-
fees, wounds and blood his, because he
has earned it on the battlefield, face to face
with his rebel enemy in death struggle
his, as his person, name and identity are
his ; and shame on the man who would de-
prive him of it, and on the country which
by indrection and cunning would juggle
him out of it at last.
You say the negro is part and parcel
of Southern society and your inference
from this is that he is subject to the infuen-
ces which control the white population, and
can direct them to his own advancement.
The least knowledge of Southern society
denies the statement, and the inference.
How large a part is he of Southern socie-
ty? Is he any thing but despised, hunt
ed man, the scoff and scorn of those who
have grown fat upon his degradation and
can he ever rise, while he has no other
chance, to a level with those who feel an
interest in crushing him. We have freed
him from letters and blows, let us now free
his soul from what is worse than fetters
| and blows-the knowledge that neither he
nor his posterity can stand on an equality
| with the rest of mankind; that his lot is
ever to be a slave to the caprices of socie-
| ty. The State may vote him schools, and
it may vote to take them from him. The
State may vote him protection from vio-
lence, and it may vote to inhict it it may
vote him the right to hold property, and it
may vote to deprive him of it, by excessive
taxation, or by shutting him out of Court
of Justice to defend..it. In each of these ways
he is subject to wrong without the power
of redress. The Emancipation Act only
freed his person from his hereditary enemy
his master-and he is, to-day, as much
the thrall of local Legislation as he ever
was That act could be no bill of rights
to establish his future status of equality
before the law No man is free who has
no right to defend himself against all com
ers-though personal liberty may be assur-
| ed him, he is still slave if his property
may be taken without his consent He is
still slave to the State, and that is just
as imbruting as the slavery master may
exercise.
Therefore, Mr.. BEECHER, we hold that the
ballot is positively necessary to the COM
plete restoration of prosperity to the South.
You, in effect, oppose this view Of the case
by favoring "My Policy" humbug which
denies it. You may talk, plausibly enough,
of forty years pilgrimage in the wilder
ness to civilize the negro, but with the pres
ent prejudice against him it will take a
thousand years to effect it. Give him the
ballot that is the great civiizer of mod.
ern times. You we'll know it's force. You
have been often enough on the stump to
see how it controls men. Let US not wait
for this long process of civilization, when a
half dozen years. use of the ballot will su,
percede it. Politicians, north or south, bend
before it as the harvest waves before the
wind. Oh, it has potency no public man
dare despise. A proud Southerner would
soon discover its virtue. In the hand OF
an ex-slave it will operate in two ways
first, it will beget a sentiment of respect in
the breast of him who desires its favor
towards its owner. If men would care to