The Charleston daily news. [volume] (Charleston, S.C.) 1865-1873, 1867-12-12
Affairs In Alabama.

MONTGOMERY, December u.-Governor Patter
for paying the interest on the foreign debt of Alo
bama due January 1, 1868, and has also secured
an extension OF time for the payment of the tenn
porary loan heretofore negotiated in New York,
until the same can probably be paid from collec-
tion of taxes, which avoids the necessity for
the sale of State bonds under the depressed
condition of Southern securities.
| Messrs. Henry c. Semple, of Montgomery, J0-
seph H. Speed, OF Perry and eleven other Conser-
| vative Republican members Of the Reconstruction
Convention, have published protest against the
constitution which ably vndicates their position.
They assume that the action of the Convention is
in opposition to the sentiment of the Northern
peoples as expressed in the recent elections, and
that the constitution adopted violates the condi-
tions Of the formation of the Republican party in
Alabama, by transcending the requirements of the
Reconstruction acts and adding features of pro-
scription and disfranchisement not authorized by
the measures. They believe the Northern people
will not permit the power of their government to
be directed TO the abasement and degradation OF
the white population of the South or that they will
sentence the white Of the South to be the SER
wants Of their former slaves, even as punishment
forrebeon. They argue that the civil liberty OF the
Northern people will be endangered by the con-
t:nued exercise of pro-consular rule maintained
by force over an impoverished and ruined people.
The South admits the thoroughness of their con-
quest, but trusts to the magnanimity of the con-
queror, and appeals now to the tribunal of last
resort-the people. The political power of the
blacks is coveted, under the proposed system of
suffrage, by political adventurers, who have no in
terest in common with the Southern people, as a
weapon of offence, to be welded for the accom-
plshment of their selfish schemes Of personal
aggrandizement. This race will readily surrender
itself to the arts and intrigues of designing per-
sons who fatter their vanity and encourage them
in jealous hate of the white inhabitants of the
State. The colored delegates in the Convention
moved as subsequently at the beck Of their Radi-
cal managers as ever slaves did at the command
Of their masters. The amendment TO the Bill of
Rights, introduced by Keffer, that common car
riers should make no distinction between citizens
of the State, designed to secure to the colored
people seats at table and berths with whites on
steamboats,, at hotels, and on cars, aroused con-
siderable opposition, and, threatening to produce
serious discord in the Convention, Withdrawn
by its authors and advocates; but the colored
delegates, the present members, we are informed,
obliged the Radical majority to promise them that
the legislature should and would carry it into
effect. The address alludes to the fact that the
Convention refused to provide separate schools
for the whites and blacks, and simply provided in
the constitution for the establishment of one or
more schools in each school district, by which, if
only one school should be established in district,
children of both must attend the same school,
One of the standing committees unanimously re-
ported an article OF the constitution prohibiting
intermarriage OF white and blacks, which was de-
feated in Difference to the sensibities Of the color
ed members, many members Of the committee that
made the report receding from their position and
voting to lay the report on the table. The signers
of the address further declare that, entertaining
the views they do, they owe it as duty to the
people to warn them against lending themselves
to the ratification of the constitution. They know
not what fate may be in store for the people, but
1t can scarcely be worse than that which they will
bring on themselves by aiding in carrying the
constitution into effect.