The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-04-24
the NEW YORK PRESS.
EDITORIAL OPINIONS OF THE LEADING JOURNALS
UPON CURRENT ToP1Cs-COMP1LED EVERY
DAY FOR THE EVENING TELEGRAPH.

y-he Greatest wonder Of the Age-The
Revolution In the south.
From the Herald.
The Southern political tour of Senator Will
son, of Massachusetts,, inaugurated at Orange
Court House, Virginia, on Saturday last, in
his opening speech there to the blacks in be-
half of the Republican party, and continued
in his speech Monday evening" to six thousand
Americans of African descent, marks new
obapter in the history of our political parties.
The Republican leaders are becoming some
What anxious as to the drift of the Southern
negro vote they have created as a political
balance of power; and Senator Wilson is but
tbe pioneer of a host of Republican orators
who will soon enter the Southern fields as
reapers of this inviting harvest. But it is evil
dent. from the letters of our attentive cor
Tesnondents in all the Southern States, that
the Republicans will not gain this Southern
black vote without struggle; that the saga
cious leaders of the ruling Southern white
class will make vigorous fight to bring about
a f,sion of Southern whites and blacks, land
OWNERS and laborers, as in a common cause,
and that TO this end the late Southern white
master will not hesitate to meet his black
felIow-citizens, lately his slaves, on the plat
form laid down by Congress-the political
eouality of whites and blacks.
OF ali the wonders of the nineteenth century
the most astounding and the most gratifying
is this wonderful revolution universally inau-
gurated in the South under the decisive re-
construction laws of Congress. A mighty
revolution was effected by the late war for the
Union in the total abolition of African slavery;
for this was the removal of the foundations
upou which the whole superstructure of the
social, religious, and political institutions of
the late slave States rested. Reconstruction,
upon the basis of universal liberty and civil
and political equality, thus became inevitable;
but from the beginning to the end of Presi-
dent Johnson's halfway experiments it was
made manifest that even for generations to
come, so long as there were any reservations
of discretion left to the ruling white class of the
Rebel States, those States would be held back
under the hope of a restoration of the old
order of things-at least to the extent of a re-
construction on the old civil and political dis
tinctions of race and color.
But Congress has solved the problem. From
Virginia to Texas there is an active, earnest
movement among the Southern whites in re-
cOgnition of the civil and political equality Of
the blacks. 1t is a revolution casting out
those fixed ideas of two hundred years growth
those ideas resulting from negro bondage
upon which the Federal Constitution was
founded, and upon which the Government
has been administered for three-quarters of a
century. Is not this great revolution in
Southern ideas the most remarkable of all the
revolutions in the history of mankind? In
the Oriental nations, and in Greece and Rome,
the transition from the restraints of slavery to
the equalities of freedom was easy, because
slavery was not marked by the enduring badge
Of foOlOr nba ba ai1 pf hp IL
patton of the serfs of Russia. But American
slavery, limited to the negro, and resting upon
the religious belief of the negro's divinely
appointed subsection as a slave to the white
!. man, is totally different thing. Still with
us, even yet, in nearly all the Northern States,
political distinctions against the negro, re-
sulting from negro slavery in the South, more
or less prevail.
All these things considered, we can hardly
believe the reports of our correspondents or
the evidence of our senses touching this won
derful revolution in Southern ideas. Thus,
for example, stands General Wade Hampton,
of South Carolina, disfranchised leader OF
the Rebellion, pleading the old abolition plea
of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" to a
meeting of blacks, who only the other day
were his absolute slaves, and regarded by
himself as divinely placed under his sovereign
will and pleasure as their lord and master
Neither suffering nor policy could WORK such
a change single-handed; but where helpless
ness, necessity, and sound policy combine
even those old Southern inborn ideas, inherited
with thousand negro slaves-ideas which
have survived four years disastrous war fo
the sovereign rights of slavery, are vanquisheC
and dismissed.
General Wade Hampton represents the in
terests of the Southern landholders agains
Senator Wilson and the interests of the Re
publican party. As the contest goes on, tn
lines dividing the future political parties
the South will begin to appear, and the ter
denotes of the negro vote. At present it seem
to be drifting to the Republican camp, an
under some vague notion that confscation
to crown the work of emancipation, but whe
this fallacy is dispelled, as it must be, III
Southern negro will take clearer view of M
political policy, and will shape his cour.
accordingly. Meantime it will be intensel
interesting to watch the developments of tn
new political era in the South, and its reactiC
upon our political parties in the North.