The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-06-28
Helpers "Nojoque."

rTOTH He 1T1O11be.
Mr.. Hinton Rowan Helper was North
Carolinian, of the "Poor White" variety.
who, while hardly yet of age, was drawn
to California by the marvels related OF
her wealth in gold nearly twenty years ago.
A brief residence in that region of activity and
adventure sufficed to convince him of the i'm
mense superiority of free to slave labor as the
basis of social prosperity and progress; and he
returned to the Atlantic slope vehement con-
temner of slavery and slave owners. His new
views were set forth in volume entitled
''The Impending Crisis" which, because of
its Southern origin and its unsparing rhetoric,
secured very large sale, mainly at the N orth,
eight to ten years age. The facts it embodied,
the sentiments it diffused, might have been
far more wisely and less Extensively presented;
yet they contributed to call attention to the
utter incompatibility of slavery and liberty,
and so subserved temporary purpose.
Mr.. Helper sympathized with the Republi-
cans in so far as they sought to limit or to ex-
tinguish slavery; but he was still essentially
a Southern poor white in his antipathy to
negroes and mulattoes, whom he, with the
blind prejudice of his caste, made somehow
responsible for the degradation OF labor and the
laboring poor. He took no pains to conceal,
in his "Crisis, - his scornful hate of the blacks;
and he has now developed and intensified that
malevolence in a volume entitled as above,
whereof the avowed object is the creation Cor
! infammation) OF a public sentiment which
will drive the blacks, and lin fact) all other
races but the Caucasian, speedily off this con-
tinent, and ultimately out of existence.
| That with such purpose he should write a
| mean, low, hateful, venemous book, was in
| evitable; but his maledictons on the unoffend-
ing blacks are so furious and screechy as to
l. =. 49, l. = IL
caricaturing and satirizing, by monstrous ex-
aggeration the views which he seems to COM
mend. But Helper is not a Defoe nor Dean
Swift: he really knows no better than to fancy
that the nineteenth century will accept such
doctrines as these:-
"Certain It is, that we owe it to ourselves
and we ought 10 be able-to get rid of the negroes
| soon; but Ii they are to remain much longer in
the United States (Which may God, in HIS great
mercy, forbid y, we may as well build imme-
nate adaptation, row of hospitals and prisons,
all the way from the Atlantic TO the Pacific,
| and, upon the same plan, a range or series OF
almshouses and penitentiaries the entire dis
! tance from Lake Superior TO the Gulf of Mexico!
Aho,5S. All ire dSVii M begottien g. imps OF darkness,
| Indians, whether Mongols or mulattoes, should
at once be dismissed, aud that forever, from
thoughts of the Heaven. born whites. Wherever
seen, or wherever existing, the black and BIZ
bastardy and beggary. In America these races
are the most unwieldy occasioners of dishonor
and weakness; they are the ill-favored and un-
welcome instruments Of disservice; they are
the ghastly types of effeteness and retrogres-
sion. AZ the earliest practicable moment
these lnuule and baneful elements OF our popu-
lation must be either deported or fossilized"
Here is the manner in which Helper re-
CARDS and characterizes impartial sufrage:--
"This Is the ineorrigible and grovelllng igno-
ramus upon ,l Wnom u is proposed to confer at
once the privilege OF voting-the right of uni
veTsal suffragel This is the Ioathsome and
most execrable wretch (rank.smeIIinS and
hideous arch criminal that he isi vino has been
| mentioned as one ht to have n Voice in the
enactment of laws for the governrnsnt ~ the
| American peoplel Shall we confer Inc elec1i We
franchise on this base-born and ill-bred hlacl,a-
mOor-ths hldeous and skunk-scented iiiotg
| MOI Why not Because he does not know
and cannot know. how TO vote intelligentlv' II
would, therefore, TO say the least. be an act OF
gross folly on our part, to extend To the negro
the privilege OF doing what the omnlpoLeni
God of Nature has obviously, and Tor all time
denied him the power to do. Those OF our half
witted and denagogical legislators who waste
| Time in attempting TO prove the equality OF thu
q | negro and in the drafting of absurd laws TO
his recognition in good faith as a citizen OF th'
United States might. with equal propriety
Dusy themselves In the ridiculous irrationali1l