The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-11-21

hood and loyalty, undertake that responsi-
bility under great disadvantages. Most of
them are poor and hitherto obscure men,
who utterly lack familiarity with legislative
proceedings and constitutional history: some
are of the despised, detested black race. and
have scarcely learned TO read, having been
field hands, TO instruct whom was felony by
statute not three years ago. They are
watched with unooncealed contempt and ma
lignity by very large majority of the old
planting aristooracy and its legal, mercantile,
and clerical satellites, who expect to over
throw, on the heels of the next Presidential
election, the governments now to be erected,
and replace them by substitutes of their own
construction, based on the assumption that
blacks have no rights that whites are bound
to respect. On the side of the aristooracy is
nearly the entire press-able unscrupulous,
and envenomed-and nearly all who send tele-
grams to Northern journals. OF course, the
so-called ''negrO governments" must expect to
have all they do misrepresented to their pre-
judice, and very much evil charged to them
and believed in which they never thought of.
Judging by what has been, they may expect to
find themselves charged with all manner of
evil deeds and purposes, even in the columns
of journals which would treat them fairly if
they could.
We entreat the Southern Conventions,
therefore, to eschew carefully even the appear
seem to savor of revenge or prescription.
Make equal rights for all citizens your corner
stone and bury in oblivion whatever is hate
full in the past, while taking the amplest seou-
rity against oppression in the future. Disap-
point those who predict new civil war as the
result of black enfranchisement, and pile proof
upon proof that universal Justice is enduring
peace. Show the world that you comprehend
the exigency, and can read the lesson involved
in the fate of the late aristocracy, who, in
seeking to extend and strengthen slavery,
destroyed it. The assured predominance of
Republican principles, alike at the South and
at the North, imperatively requires that the
freedmen should prove safer, discreeter, more
competent repositories of power than their
late masters did.
We believe the Conventions will be fully
justified in exacting of every voter promise
or oath that he will not henceforth seek to
disfranChise the blacks. Liberty and equal
rights for all being the cornerstone of the new
political ediice erected on the downfall of Sc
session and slavery, it may be well to quiet
apprehension, preclude danger, and stake
bond Of fate," by such requirement. And
this, we are confident will suffice. No confs-
| cation, no spoliatiOn, no vengeance let the
changes be so many as are requisite to secure
| and maintain equal rights; and there stop. Let
the changes be few and perspicuous, though
far-reaching; let the Constitutions be as brief
and simple as may be; and as nearly like those
they supersede as is consistent with the great
end of making each one of them a Gibraltar of
human liberty. Then let the work be con-
summated at the earliest practicable moment,
and let every State be fully represented in
Congress before the 1st of March. Our enc
mics assert that we wish to keep the South
out of Congress: let us show them how utterly
they are mistaken. And as each resumes her
proper position, reconstructed and regene-
rated, let the auspicious event be itly honored
| in every State of the Union.