The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-07-27


three million FIVE hundred thousand blacks
which gives the whites majority of million.
Allowing one voter to every seven persons,
these figures will cover FIVE hundred thousand
black voters against six hundred and fifty
thousand white voters. The blacks have
decisive majorities in South Carolina, Missis-
sippi, and Louisiana; the whites in Virginia,
North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas,
and Texas, while the two races nearly balance
each other in FlOrida--allowing for the larger
destruction of the whites by the war and the
increase of the blacks by aocessions during the
war from the border slave States. Hence, if
all the voters of both races are brought out,
the blacks are sure of three States, aud they
may carry four or five of the ten. We may
safely assume that, while the blacks en- musSe
will vote the Republican ticket, they will be
supported by some considerable fractions of
the whites; so that, If we go no further, the
chances are in favor of the blacks.
But Rebel acknowledgements will probably
in the aggregate cut off seventy-fve thousand
men otherwise entitled to vote; so that in all
the ten States concerned the whites will have
but seventy FIVE thousand majority to rely
upon. But, in the next place. the actual regis
trations made of voters from Virginia to Texas
exhibit an almost unbroken catalogue of black
majorities, so heavy in most places as to show
that large numbers of whites, from indiifer-
ence, disgust, or despair have given up the
fight ON the threshold, and that, from the Po-
tOmac to the Rio Grande, the Republicans,
with their solid black vote and their white
supporters, hold the game of reconstruction in
their hands.
So, from the facts and figures before us, the
actual situation of things warrants the oonclu-
sion that the Republican party will carry
nearly all, if not all these ten outside revolu-
tionized Southern States in their work of re-
construction. Nor is it likely that the blacks,
constituting in all these States the bulk and
strength of the party, will consent to do all
the work without any of its rewards. They
have only to demand share ofthe honors and
offices to get them. Hence, we may conf
IDENTIFY expect, and during the present Con-
gress, that sprinkling of members of African
descent in both Houses suggested by Senator
Sumner.
We are called, then, to inquire what will be
the moral effect in the political world of this
startling innovation upon the old order Of
thingsl We may be sure that negro equality,
proclaining itself through negro voices from
both Houses of Congress, will make a pro-
found impression upon the public mind
throughout the North. We apprehend that
the result will be general reaction against
the Republican party i'll the Northern States
for we know that there is a stronger wall of
white prejudice against the negro in the North
than exists i'll the South. This prejudice
elected BuCnanan IN 1000, ana WOulu nave
elected Douglas or Breckenridge in 1860, had
the Charleston Convention consented to unite
upon either. We may expect, then, when
the blacks assume the political balance of
power of ten reconstructed Southern States,
and send up their black representatives to
Congress, that there will be a. revolutionary
reaction against them among the whites of the
North which will upset the Republican party.
This may be the real object of those lead
ing Southern white politicians who are urging
their people to the experiment of allowing
the radicals and the blacks all the rope they
may desire in this business of Southern recon-
struction. Let us push this thing of negro
equality, say these Southern leaders, into
Congress, and then the laboring white masses
of the North against this Southern negro
political balance of power will take the alarm,
and Northern reaction of the whites against
the blacks will be the inevitable result and
thus the Republican negro party will be de-
stroyed by its own weapons.
This will, in all probability, be the solu-
tion of the experiment of the political or
ganization of the blacks against the whites in
the South-a reaction of the whites against
the blacks and the Republican party in the
North. Meantime, however, we suspect that
the spontaneous and powerful popular move
ments North and South in behalf of General
Grant for the succession will carry everything
before them; but with the settlement of this
question there will unquestionably come a
decisive Northern revolution on this other and
mOmentOus issue of negro political and social
equality.