Nashville union and dispatch. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1866-1868, 1867-03-20
RADICAL MISREPRESENTATION
aNn sEKRnRnFEV


RADICAL MISREPRESENTATION
AND EHYPOCRIsY.
The New York Ecening Postprints an
article prophesying that hereafter there
are to be two political parties in the
Southern States. Do the able and wells
informed conductors Of that journal re.
member time previous to the civil war,
when there were not two parties in those
States There never was such time,
and the merest tyro in politics cannot be
50 ignorant as to believe that there was.
The people Of those States never sunk
their political divisions, until in the pre-
sence Of actual danger to their common
interests. The Post perverts history in
order to sustain an unfounded charge
against the leading public men Of the
South, of desire TO consolidate public
sentiment for some factious and sinister
psrpose. Il asserts that they deprecate
the formation Of parties, and divisions Of
opinion among the masses of the people
but predicts that they will be disap-
pointed and that the South is never more
to be welded as a political unit F..
If it be desirable to have parties in a
free State, and it not only is, but IL inevi-
table there viii always be, the Post and
its party in the North, who claim to have
achieved this great desideratum for the
South, are disingeneous and inconsistent
to the last degree They are destroying
that liberty of opinion and freedom of
action which are the necessary elements
and aliment Of part:es, and through
which, they can alone exercised healthful
influence in the government. They aye
proceeding by acknowledgements to at
tempt TO concentrate the whole voting
population in support of their views and
objects, and by denunciations and penal
ties to deter men from expressing opin-
ions adverse to them What the Post
charges the Southern men with desiring to
do in behalf of what they conceive to be
the best interest of their people, they are
by the agency Of the government, which,
by party majority they have under con-
troll, seeking to do in furtherance Of
Northern projects. The vital principle
of Radical legislation is the deeiti-
zenizing of every man who does
not declare himself Radical Ii
it were possible for them to apply it as
completely as the Radical leaders wish,
they would make the vote of the South
solid in support of every measure they
have at heart The delay they have
caused in restoring the Union, and the
continuance Of the civil commotion which
is producing such disastrous results to
the material prosperity of the South, is
for the single purpose Of manipulating
the vote Of the Southern States in their
favor at the Presidential election in 1868;
or failing in that, to deny them all power
in the electoral college whatever 1t was
for this, and this alone, that they enfran-
ehised the negroes on whose ignorance,
credulity, and supposed gratitude for the
boon of freedom which they claim TO have
conferred on them, they rely; and for this,
and not from any fear Of disloyal action
by the whites, that they have excluded
the latter in great numbers from the bal~
lot-box. 1t is for this that they are, by
every appliance, endeayoring to stiae free
thought, and fetter free action-that they
have oyerthrown the freedom of States,
and planted a series Of petty despotisms
in its stead
Not in this matter of two parties in
the Southern States only, but in every
thing else, the Radical party is what
Dlsraeli described Sir Robert Peel to be,
a huge organized hypocrisy. Processing
to be the preservers of the government
under the constitution, it has destroyed
its distinctive features; in the name of
liberty it has founded a despotism
preaching morality as a part of its creed,
it has maugurated venality and corrup-
ton in public affairs, as national char
acteristics The article from the Post in
regard to the Southern press and leaders
of opinion, is of piece with this
hypocrisy. 1t bellies the South, when it
says that there was not freedom of
opinion there before the war on all SUBJ
jects IL bellies its own desire and
intent when it appears to favor such
freedom now, and proposes the establish
ment of political parties founded on free
difference Of opinion and its unrestricted