Nashville union and dispatch. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1866-1868, 1867-12-29
THE CONDITION: OF THE SOUTH.

THE CONDITION, OF THE SOUTH.
The Radicals have gloated over the
idea that the South must be impover-
ished, and the legislation of Congress has
been shaped to this end An almost pro-
hibitory tax has been imposed upon the
production of cotton, and thousands of
men who engaged in that branch of ag-
riculture the past year have been ruined
because Of this tax. 1t is estimated by
Gen. Gillem that at least three~ffths of
the freedmen in Mississippi will be
thrown out Of employment the coming
year by planters abandoning the culture
Of cotton. This shows the ruin brought
upon one Of the fairest States of the
South by the Radical policy But in
their efforts to impoverish the white peO-
pie of the South, the Radicals are about
to involve the negroes in the ruin they
are bringing down upon the white race.
What is true of Mississippi is equally so
Of the other cotton growing States Thou
sands upon thousands of stalwart negroes
in these States will find themselves out Of
employment at the beginning Of the year,
and at the same time without the means
Of subsistence. The condition Of these
negroes. is pitiable in the extreme,
and if the government does not come to
the relief Of these negroes, we do not
see how large numbers Of them are to be
preserved from starving long before the
earliest crops of the coming year can
mature. So much for the Radical effort
to impogerish the white people Of the
South But this is not all The emissa-
ries of that party instilled into the minds
Of the negroes that about this time the
lands Of the white people of the South
would be taken and divided 50 that each
negro would receive forty acres of land,
and in some localities they were promised
in addition two mules The conse-
quences of these promises are being de-
veloped in Mississippi and Alabama,
where the military have been appealed
to to hold the negroes in subsection, And
now the telegraph informs US that reign
of terror prevails in portions Of Virginia,
from the fact that the negroes have be.
come desperate at the delay in the pro-
missed distribution offarms, and now seek
revenge by house-burning cattle-stealing
and other Outrages. This reign of terror
seems to be confined at present to the
counties Of Prince Edward, Lunenburg,
Halifax, Mecklenburg, Amelia and Spott-
sylvania The white citizens are repre-
scented as banding themselves together
for their own protection, and it seems
almost impossible to avert a war Of races,
unless the strong arm Of the military
shall be interposed to prevent the arson
and stealing of which it is charged tue
negroes are guilty. Throughout the South
discrganized state of affairs exists, the
result of the Legislation which has made
the negroes the governing class. This
legislation has exerted a most pernicious
influence upon the great body of the
negroes, in melting them to the adoption
of a course tending to ALLEVIATE the whites
entirely from them, The coming year is
the most gloomy upon which the South
has ever entered. The crops of the past
year were a failure, the laboring class
disorganized and rendered almost worth-
less, and the planters almost if not quite
bankrypted; this is the condition upon
whichSthe South enters upon the new
year.