Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1866-04-07

Taught by Cupid since the fall
But know little widow
Who could win and fool you all
From the Louisville Journal, April5.l
Ought Not the PhiIa N tllrOPists, So
Called, 10 Pause?
Twenty-nine negro paupers were buried
in this city last month, aud one white pau
per. The record is black in more senses
than one. 1t marks the CLEAN of philan-
thropy, so called. 1t is lustrOus with mis-
cry. 1t is the echo Of the freedman's shout.
What is true of Louisville in this respect
is true of every Southern city and village
and county. The mortality among the ne
groes has been fearful, Unprecedented
They have perished by the score, the hun
dred, the thousand. They have dropped
down by the wayside, in the crowded city,
and in the woods. They have died of a spe-
cies of cholera, of smallpox, of vice, of
filth, and starvation. We have seen them
coming from the plantations with their
bundles upon their backs and their children
in their arms, and crowding into improvised
tents In the neighborhOOd of negro camps
with nothing to protect them from the ele-
ments but rags, and nothing to eat except
what they might be able to beg or steal,
with never thought of the future, and
expecting, as a matter of course, that the
power that freed them would take care OF
them.
1t has been computed by many that one
million of these victims of secession and
philanthropy have vanished from the earth
since the war began! We call that costly,
and, in humanitarian point of view, hor-
rible. 1t is not possible for us to regard it
as a philanthropic work. 1t seems to us
more like the elimination of devil worship.
If the philanthropists, so.called, consider
ita work worthy of rejoicing over, let them
eXult. Let the winds wait their peans over
the desOlate fields of the South, and minge
them with the piteOuS means to which a
thousand old sbanties, lanes, and rag houses
have listened from million of the sable
sons and daughters of Africa. Let them
raise dark monument, and inscribe on
one side ''Philanthropy" and on the other
''Secession;" and let an index point to a
million of lov'ly African graves, upon the
rough head-DOards of which shall be
painted, "Humanity and Freedom"
The philanthrOpists ought to be satisfied
with the large work they have accomplish
ed with the cooperation of their friends,
the secessionists. The measure of their
ambition ought to be full now. Can't they
rest content with the slaughter of million
of niggers? Are they determined to kill of
the other three millions? What have the
poor Africans done that they should be thus
relentlessly pursued by the Nemesis of phi
lanthrOpy? Are they to have no rest for
their souls except in the grave? Having
freed them at the cost of a million of their
lives, the philanthropic Juggernaut seems
now determined to make politicians of the
other three millions, in order to kill them
off.
The worst thing that can be done for the
freed negro at the present time is to make
him a politician-which is just what the
super -philanthropists, so called, are at
tempting to bring about. If there is any
one thing that is clear and which admits OF
no kind of doubt at all in the mind of any
man acquainted with the freedmen and the
condition of the South at the present time,
it is that the eX-slave is not now fit to be-
come politician. 1t must ruin him. 1t
must bring upon him untold miseries. 1t
must rouse his passions. 1t must make him
idle and insolent, vicious and dishonest. 1t
must tend to produce conflict of races,
and to reproduce in this country upon an
extended scale all the horrors of thyti and
Jamaica. 1t must curse the South with in-
describable curses. 1t must cripple its in
dustry and reduce it to barbarism. 1t must
impoverish the North and overwhelm il
with taxation.
The negro is not now lit for politics. He
is not superior to the white man-if the SUI
-philanthropists, so called, will excuse
such heresy-and the white man cannot
take care of and digest more than one great
thought at time, The negro is now free
Freedom is, consequently, his great
thought. Give him time to assimilate that
and incorporate it practically into his con-
stitution before thrusting something else
upon him, before making him politician as
well as freedman. Hitherto, he has not
taken care of himself, and has had master
to take care of him. 1t remains therefore
to be seen, first of all, whether he is able to
manage freedom and provide for his own
wants, moral and physical, for if it should
turn out that he cannot do that much, then
it will certainly follow that he cannot do
that and something else. Ii he cannot man
age freedom alone, he cannot manage both
freedom and politics at the same time. Let
him tustle with freedom first, and see
which will get the victory.
We warn the philanthropists super, so
called, of the inevitable and fatal conse-
quences which must attend their efforts, il
successful, to thrust politics upon the freed
men before they have had proper time to
grapple with freedom. Those consequences
will cast blight upon the North as well as
the South. Every moral and material in
terest of the country must suffer. There
is not village. so remote on the waters ol
the extreme Upper Mississippi or Upper
Connecticut or upon any other river as tc
be beyond the influence Of the Leathear
stream that would pour its deadly waters
over the entire land from the successful at.
tempt to thrust politics upon the whole
freedmen OF the Southern States. The
semi-secession papers in the latter-whict
are giving more or less support to the phi.
lanthrophists super, s0-called-would bt
the first to feel its benumbing power, az
they were to go down before the avalanche
of secession.
Twentv-nine negro pauper burials in one
month will make three hundred and forty.
eight in a year, and this last sum multi
piled by the number of cities, villages, anC
counties in the entire South will make-f
lrightful number; we don't know and dom
want to know how many. If the negro
cannot digest freedom alone, how, can ht
tninoof fraadnnn and nOlifipg2