The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-12-31
Two Pictures.

From the Chicago Republican.
Nelson Walker, n negro announces himself
in the Nashville Times candidate for the office
OF sheriff Of Davidson county.
Alfred Menifee. n negro, was elected on Mon
day, by the Nashville CITY Council, as a mem
Der the Board of Education.
Above are two items that have started their
round Of the press. They carry the mind back
to the Nashville of seven years ago, and speak
with an earnest and terrible significance Of the
barbarsm within ivilization-inlperium in i'm
paio-that dominated society in those oligar-
chical days, and also of the breaking up of the
Southern organism, of the deluge of passion
that swept the old order of things into anar-
chy, and OF the new and remarkable out
grOwths when the war of the elements had
subsided.
In 1860, Walker was a barber, free, in the
Tennessee meaning of the word, when applied
to a mulatto while Menlfee, another copper
oolored individual of the victim race, was a
chattel, upon whose valuation in dollars the
master annually paid to the State a direct tax.
Neither had the rights of manhood. In the
parlance of the time, one was labor owned by
a W bite man, the other was labor owned by
himself In the contemplation of public
opinion, both were property, only the pro-
prietorships were different. At one time,
Walker could have sold himself for so much
money, and possessed the inestimable right to
say how much he would take and from whom
he would take IL; Menitee might have been
transferred to another owner without consul
tation of his wishes, and the cash arising from
the transaction would have gone into the
pocket of him at whose bidding he had been
compelled to come and go.
Now, how changed the relations cf these
two cOlored men to external circumstances!
Property no more-the mudsills Of Southern
society no more-shackled no more by public
opinion that binds as closely and as fast with
its viewless fetters as the ailor's handouts
they stand before the law the peers in politi-
cal and civil rights and privileges of their
late masters-master in the one case by acci-
dent of birth-master, in the other case, by
virtue of written bond and taxed value. No
longer the connecting link between beast and
human, they stand forth in recognized man
hood-free American citizens. '
In 1860, had the one dared even to whisper
his ambition to be Sheriff of Davidson county,
the voiced aspiration would have struck a
whole community dumb with astonishment at
the efirOntery, had it not rather stirred public
indignation to its profoundest depths, culmi-
mating in death-dealing vengeance. In 1860,
had any City Council of Nashville dared to
appoint the other to membership upon the
Board of Education, society would have been
convulsed as with the throes of an earthquake
and the recusant members who had ventured
ON such an unhallowed experiment would
have found halters ready to hang them to con-
venient lamp-posts.
Take the changed condition, and what g
volume of comment does it speak upon the
march of liberal ideas Can it be that this is
the self-same Nashville that seven years ago
was slave-mart where babes were torn from
their mothers breasts, and sold for fifty dol
lars each H-the very city from which black
man escaped nailed up in a dry goods box
which burst open during the transit through
Indiana causing the return of the fugitive
amid furore never created by Jackson in hi
palmiest daysI nE- aa- lr #a -EE