The tri-weekly standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1866-1868, 1867-10-05
HOW TO DEFEAT OURSELVES.

Those who oppose a convention un-
der the reconstruction laws, and who
advocate the formation of white party,
excluding therefrom every white man,
however opposed to Radical excesses,
to confiasction, aud disfranchisement,
who was moi for secession, and eXclud-
ing every black man, however friendly
to the whites and however hostile to
measures of prescription and punish
ment, claimed to be, par excellence, Con-
servatives!
Can that be conservatism which
draws rigorous lines between the races,
and which proscribes all whites who
were not Confedenates, because of their
Uuion sentiments, however desirous
they may be for harmony among Vir-
giniaus and for the welfare and pros
perity of Virginia? Can that be con
servatism which declares that there shall
be malignant, perpetual enmity between
those classes and the ex-Confederates
Such conservatism is fraught with the
elements of discord and ruin.
Is there any wisdom, any reason,
any good feeling in an organization that
would bar it's gates against any voter
who honestly desires the welfare OF
Virginia, no matter what his color or
what his opinions in the paste
Such a party, if formed, will be want
ing in the leading essential element of
human organizations. 1t will have no
capacity of expansion, no element of
accommodation. All it's natural ten
dency will be to contract rather than
to expand. 1t will contain clements of
an intensely narrowing character. Its
object will be to drive all non-Confed
crates beyond the pale and to exclude
them from every office Of trust and from
every State and national position. We
may say, with an English author who
wrote of another sort of fanaticism
"Tbe exigencies of great patriotic
crisis cannot be kept within the tram
mels of narrow fanaticism."
Suppose such party formed-whom
will it includeg Only Confe'lerates
All other whites will be excluded
Our white population is going to in
crease by Northern and European inn
migration. Wheu those immigrants
come they are not going to array them
selves against Unionisn and ally them
selves with the lost Confederate cause.
Thy will, hence be excluded from the
projected white party and be compelled
to join the opposing party.-But the
narrowing process will not stop here.
The new party will be ambitious to be
reckoned a very select party-crenae de
la creme. 1t will perhaps exclude all
who did not oppose convention, all
who recognize the fact ofnegro suffrage,
all who should not make the resolutions
of '9S-'99, as expounded by the Eaquirer,
their creed. 1t will probably thus 90
on-narrowing until it becomes a hand.
full of purified spirits, without any of
the dross of the earth-only restless
longing after Office. Instead of build
ing itself up, the Radicals, or black
party, or whatever the party may he
called which is to antagonize it, could
not possibly invent any project by which
their numbers could be so much in
creased as they would be by this scheme
black mans party only 1t would con-
tain every white man who now belongs
to it., every immigrant from the North
or from abroad. 1t would have what
no party can succeed acknowledgements
OF accommodations and capacity OF ex-
pansion. H"'a t3s-4 .s'..'.'-
We have heretofore shown that the |
voting white majority in this State is
only between thirteen and fourteen thou
and, that this ,majoriy is in the Valley
counties, and that probably the whites
now acting with the Republican party
number considerably more than fourteen
thousand. We have also called atten.
ton to what is stated to be the fact, by
those who have looked into it, that,
out of the one hundred and five election
districts, eighty.odd have black majori-
ues. If, then, we organize a party on
d;.: diie basis OF color, and excluding in ad
uillon hundreds and thousands of white
m"1 mIh, VIII we not take The most effect 1
uIl and certain means To defeat our.