Weekly Calaveras chronicle., 1866-04-21
demonstration

recently published deserve the candid con-
sideration Of the American public. 1t would
seem as if the approach of decth cleared the
mental vision of the lamented young states
man, and that, like the lawgiver of old,
though he could not himself enter into the
| promised land,' yet from his elevated point
of vision every feature of its prospect, to its
renotest boundary, was in full view before
him. For a man of his years. Mr.. Davis had
long held prominent position in American
politics. He was not one of the "premature
agitators," whom he compares to socks
which crow at midnight" not heralding the
dawn, but merely disturbing natural rest by
untimely clamor. While an ardent, he was
practical statesman; never wasting his
strength on Utopian schemes of policy, and
never finching from fearless vindication of
his views of the right on all questions of
principle which were pressing for solution.
While the country was at peace in all her
borders, and each State obeying its Constitu-
tional obligations, and claiming nothing but
its Constitutional rights, the great majority
of the North was disposed to look upon all
agitation of the question of slavery as un-
timely; and while mentally disappearing
was quietly willing to let the sins of slavery
and the wrongs of the slave rest upon the
soul and conscience of individual slave-own-
ers. Each man of the -slaveholding
States said, or was told, that we had nothing
to do with the question-that onr skirts were
clean; and that no responsibility of slavery
rested upon us and all agitation was depre-
Gated. Whether that was the correct view,
it is bootless now to debate; let by cones be
by-gones it is not worth while to "Waste
ammunition on dead ducks" The "Nigger
| Question:" however, was not fated to be
smothered out; its agitation could Fever be
suspended, while it afforded theme upon
which e-eating demagogues could rally the
South as a unit, and make her their plant
tool and on it the "Southern heart was
fired" and civil war was ''precipitated' on
the country. And now, after five years of
war and misery, the 'Nigger Question" is
still upon us and there is not, and never
will be peace to US from it until it meets with
just solution. Since such direful effects to
the whole nation have sprung from this
niger question, no one of truth and intelli-
gence will now claim that the whole coun-
try has not right to have it settled in such
a manner as will secure our future peace and
safety. No one can now claim that its So
luton is a local question. The national
debt, and the graves of ;nnumerable dead
slaughtered in the late civil war, demonstrate
that it is not a local question.
The time for tinkering compromises is past.
Since compromise has been delusion and a
snare which has led our feet among the pit
falls of National ruin, let us in reconstruc-
ing the late rebellious States, be little rad
ical, for the novelty of the thing, and try for
once the policy of honesty. Let US in our
hearts, as we'll as on our lips, acknowledge
that all men are men, with rights which all
are bound to respect. The trouble is, with
President Johnson, that he was born and
raised under the shadow of an institution
which denied the manhood of the negro, and
never treated him otherwise than a chattel.
He, johnson, may be in full sympathy with
the poor whites of the South, but for the
poor blacks of the South he has no sympa-
thy whatever, and is utterly incapable of
doing them justice.
No treatment of the subject of reconstruc-
ton will ever be satisfactory without being
just; and none will be just which ignores
the rights of the blacks. 1t is no answer to
the negro's claims, to say that he is ignorant
and degraded. when we have made him so.
AS well might we amputate mans limb, and
then abuse him for being a cripple As Mr..
Davis has said in the letter above referred to
THE negroes are as integral part of the
people of the State as the whites; both are
citizens; neither has right to exclude the
other; neither can speak in the name of the
State for the other; it is the equal right of
both to be heard and represented in constitu-
ting their common government, and any pro-
posal to submit the question of the political
or civil rights of the negroes to the arbitra-
ment of the whites, is as unjust and absurd
as to submit the question of the political
rights of the whites to the arbitrament of the
negroes-with this difference-that the ne
groes are loyal everywhere, and stha. great
body If the whites disloyal everywhere"
Winter Davis letter was written on May
9th, 1865, at which time President johnson
was supposed to be as radical man as there
was in the Union. He, like johnson, was
fiom slave State; but how different the
lessons which the two men learned from the
same master. By the side of Davis states
manlike opinions how dwarfed and pigmy
seem the ideas of our President. Davis
thought that ITO permit the whites to dis
franchise the negroes is to permit those who
have been our enemies to ostracise our
friends and that "The shame and folly of
deserting the negroes are equaled by the wis.,
dom of recognizing and protecting their pow
er." The President again runs in the old
grooves of "State rights and 'lecal ques-
tions," utterly ignoring the lessons of the
last five years. He is in the same frame of
mind as when he, in his early days, stumped
his county for democracy, cursing the nigger
Just as though the late democratic war had
not demonstrated what all that meant, and
as though sea of blood did not lie between
now and then. The catch-phrase of this
being q white mans government has blinded
him, and he can neither see through it or