The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1867-11-11
PRESS.
PORTLAND.
Monday Morning, November II, 1867.


| mouudY morning, november LII 1oof'
---.---.---- - -
With Malice toward Mono.
To be able to see no difference between thu
motives that sent Jetlreys to hold the bloody
assizes and Turenne to lay waste the Palatin
ate ON the one hand, apd those that send the
five military officers to govern the Southern
States, on the other, argues defect In the
reasoning powers or criminal inattention to
the facts of contemporary history. Yet so fal
as there is any reactionary feeling against the
Republican policy and as respects national
Questions we contend that it is very slisht-it
is occasioned by curious misunderstanding
of the true ar.i,nus OF the party. Almost the
entire Nortbern people have long since recoy-
cred from whatever vindictive feeling against
the South may have been occasioned by the
war; and when they see measures proposed
which seem to them inspired by spirit of
hate, and having no other utility or justice
than the qualification of that feeling, they re-
volt from those measures and from the partv
that adopts them. But those who under
stand the reason and applaud the wisdom and
benevolence OF the measures o. the dominant
party are still numerous enough and resohre
enough push on the work begun to its con
summation They know that military rule,
though harsh and uncongenial to our republ.
can ways Of thought, is yet better than the
anarchy which would exist in default of its
existence. They realize that though the tenn
ianial n Gfofa and al, til
dence to the people ofa great country is an evil
ofunquestionable magnitude, yet tits bet er so,
than to permit the rehabilitation ofany part of
the Rebel territory ON an anti democratic ba-
Sis Were they thus restored, hopeless of re-
form from within and haughtily rejecting in
reference from without, their political growth
would be as slow as, according to the Darwin
Ian theory, the development of the human
race from Its misshapen original prototypes
has been. To preserve the peace, to make it
lasting, and to establish justice, have been the
sole objects of the Congressional enactments.
If these objects could have been attained
without the Freedmen's Buresu, the Recon
struction acts and the denial of representa-
ton to ten States, no mar, North or South,
could have urged those measures without in
slant loss of influence, office and the respect
Of his fellow citizens.
Confiseation is the only project that has ev
or been seriously proposed which has in view
anything more than such chastisement
measures solely for restraining it from doing
further harm. The advocates of confiscation
have justified that, too, by attempting to
identify it with the remedial proceedings that
have been found Indispensable to meet the
ends of justice and of peace. Their reason
ing not without Its weight, either, though
magnanimous people, detecting in it some
thing vengeful, have repudiated it with an ev
er increasin, emphasis. Those who still per-
sist in urging 1t as measure Of necessity and
right are but careless observers of the public
temper. No one listens to their explana-
tions.
Ii the advocates of confiscation could Sc
cure listeners, they would be heard to say sub
stantially what is set forth in late number
OF Forney's Chronicle. The writer is speak
ING VI euS oiSNuaiSO VI hCSlO CLbpiVyCtS uJ
capitalists who are disappointed in not being
able to control their votes. He shows that
these angry aristocrats win find they have
difficult problem to solve in attempting to
punish the negro without involving them
--sl.-A-- : IL 48iaaslt;as- If they
should succeed in pauperizing the laboring
men of the South, our author appeals to con-
fiscation as the only adequate remedy for this
crowning act of cruelty and oppression. He
says: aia @ai 1a4
1t is very we'll known that the negro has for
generations been emphaticaily the laborer of
the South and as all wealth is the product
Of labor, the negro has really produced the
bulk of all the wealth in that section. This
being the case, it is hard that those who le-
gallg own this wealth should withhold from
him who created it the means of earning his
daily bread. There is remedy for him
which in that case will be very likely to sug-
gest itself for favorable consideration. A man
has no moral right to fence in a thousand
acres of Gods earth and bid hundred peo-
pie starve for want OF the food they might
raise there. If the owners of the large
plantations will not give the negro an
opportunity to earn his bread on their
land, jusl Government can furnish
him with an opportunity of earning it on his
own. There are enough undoubted rebels
whose estates, ii confiscated, would supply a
sufficient number oil small farms torender the
negro population of the South independent
of the caprices Of the rebel whites; and the
course now being pursued in Virginia is
more likely than anything else to make this
remedy necessary.
But this remedy will never be and never
ought to be applied. If the Southern people
choose to commit acts Of the greatest injus-
tice, they can do so with perfect impunity so
long as they avoid infringements of the law.
Capitalists have legal right 10 discharge
their laborers, and all the protection that
Congress can afford to the suffering victims is
to educate them and give them equal civil and
political rights. Conservatives call this sin-
gularly temperate course vindictive and ty
rannical but history will call them block
heads for thinking so, and unwise and unpa-
triotic citizens for acting in accordance with
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