The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1866-11-12
Downfall of the seuthern Olisarosy.

Downfall Of the Southern Oiigarchy.
One fact which the late elections in the
North must make plainly manifest to the
people in the South Is the determination Of
the country that the old politicians who have
misruled the country for the past afsy years
shall not again come into power. Nothing
served more to arouse the strong party feel
ing displayed in the late political contests
than the prominence taken In tho attempted 10
construction Of the democratic party by the
old secession leaders OF the South, like Wise and
Stephens, 70 the exclusion Of Union men like
Joshua Hill, and the copperhsads Of the North,
like Cymsr and Hoffman, to the exclusion Of
sound war democrats like Dix. The country
docs not need and does not desire tho reor-
ganisasion Of the democratic party with COP
perheads and rebels ct Ii head; and the poo
pie of tho South had better repudiats tho
demagegues Of the past, and with younger
leaders, from the middle, not the moneyed
class, take . new departure for prospe-
rity, enlightenment and peace by adopting
the constitutional amendment which restores
the "bone and sinew" Of the South to their
rights and privileges in the Union, while il
forever consigns to obscurity the old leaders
who 80 basely oppressed and then foully be-
trsyed them into war against their own best
interests.
It il foolish for the people of the South to
say eve must stand by our old leaders,"
for it is q false sense Of honor which
induces . man to uphold another who
has betrayed him into committing wrong
The treason Of the Southern slaveholding aris-
tocracy against the country was not greater
than the inhumanity which they had for years
systematically practised upon the laboring
class Of the South. The controlling interests
in slave labor and landed property at the South
had been for many years before the war in the
hands of less than ninety thousand of the three
hundred thousand persons who owned slaves !;
and these ninety thousand have been the rulers
not only Of the South, but up to 1860 they die
tated at Washington to the country at large.
They welded q great influence for evil over
the people of the South, and retained that
power by the most infamous Of means They
persistently kept the "poor whites" in ignorance,
discouraged free schools and established only
those Of the most expensive character, leaving
the whites to grow up in ignorance, well know
ing that as long as they were ignorant they
could be ruled. They imbued the two races
which form the laboring class Of the South, the
"poor whites" and negroes, with the idea that
their interests were antagonistic, and by artful
means created between them prejudice which
to this day, and must for many years to come,
politically divide the laboring class of the
South, when it ought to be united in purpose
as 1t is in interest Through the ignorance OF
both these classes and the prejudice existing
between them, the Shareholders were enabled
to rule them with rod of iron, and the slavery
in which the negro existed was not more abso-
lutte than that endured by the "poor whites"
This ignorance and prejudice was the strength
Of the rebellion for had the people Of the
South understood the demagogues who ruled
them, and the purposes to which they aspired,
there would never have been any rebellion.
These same leaders now seek to restore their
lost power and to revive by the reconstruc-
ton of the old democratic party the machinery
by which they ruled the country before the
war; But Congress has prepared means for
forever dispossesing these leaders, and the
North has firmly and positively decided, in the
late elections, that Congress ID to be sustained
and the amendment be made law. The pro-
vision is wise ONE, framed in the true interests
of the whole people, for the benefit Of the labor
ing classes Of the South, both white and black,
and the former should step forward to assist in
the work of shelving their old leaders and null
lifying their schemes by the adoption Of the
constitutional amendment.