New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1868-05-03
paper, Of December, va make the fol.

| PdPSI1 VI OGOChtoOAf We AuhC tue lOl-
lowing extract:
RUSSIA. The emancipation of the
serfs is said to have produced results
here something like the abolition of
slavery did in the West Indies. A
letter from St. Petersburg says: At
this moment the condition of the
country is very melancholy. The
descriptions given of it by the Russian
papers are very gloomy indeed. The
peasant in many cases interprets per-
sonal independence as the right to do
nothing beyond what is required to buy
him little food and a great deal Of
gin, etc.
Now, Mr.. Editor, it is well known to
your readers that the serfs of Russia
are whites, and not blacks. The same
results produced by the emancipation
of the blacks of the West Indies by the
British were followed by similar re-
suits, and to our minds hurls the oft
repeated declaration of unceasing
maligners in their teeth, that the ne
gro is inferior to the Caucasian race
in every and any position. 1t gives
us the right under such an admission
as the above extract indicates to assert
that no one race is superior to the
other, and the negro being allowed
equal facilities and advantages, actu-
ated by the same motives, is equal to
his would-be- called superior in capac-
ity, acumen, and Intellectual develop
ment.
Such an admission on the part of
those who have so long and zealously
labored in various ways and divers
manners to prove the inferiority of
the NEGRO just now we consider OPP
perfume. Our beloved republic has
been forced to extirpate slavery, and
that, too, in its most hateful form-thus
throwing millions upon their own re-
sources for the first time since their
birth, who will doubtless interpret
freedom according to their own ideas,
false though they be; but still we feel
that the same stigma can not, and will
not, in truth and justice to their
education of the lash and chains and
other means of torture, be attached to
them as a race; but the fact that slay-
cry, in any form, generates certain
degree of idleness, be the victim lch5te
or black.
Action and reaction are equal in
ethics as in matter. The strength
and tenacity of the wicked, unnatural
prejudice which at present exists to-
ward the colored race is itself suffi-
cient guarantee that public sentiment
must and will receive a reactionary
impulse.
Knowledge is poper." And the
time is not far distant when the most
inveterate unbeliever in the capacity
of the NEGRO must yield to indubitable
evidence, so earnestly do these perse-
cuted people clutch at the hitherto
" forbidden fruit of knowledge, and
so persistent are they in its acquisi-
tion.
Education is the silent instrument
atty destined to lift this down-trod-
den race from the slough of ignorance
and imbecility where it has remained
since the tiny, apparently insignifi-
cant seeds of slavery were dropped at
jamestown. Taking deep root, they
grew into the gigantic upas tree, whose
branches overshadowed the entire ma
ton. And they did notice in the bud
the bitterness which to their sorrow
they have tasted in the fruit.
Less than seven years ago the
"Stars and Stripes" were to the col
ored race but emblems of the
cruelest oppression; beneath its folds
they CROPPED in the darkest shadows of
ignorance. Iniquity framed into law
made it a penal offense, punishable
with Imprisonment for a certain term
of years, and sometimes with death, to
teach SLAVE the letters of the alpha
bet.
snow the schoolmaster is abroad"
and is reaping an abundant harvest
from the seeds of instruction SO
industriously sown. 1t is JUSTICE
strikingly illustrated that churches
from which eight years ago a
slaveholding gospel was promulga-
ted should be converted in
to schools for the instruction
of the freedmen and women, that walls
polluted by the breath of TREASON
should now re-echo peans of praise
and thanksgiving for the redemption
of race from worse than EGYPTIAN
bondage.
Everywhere in the South you may
see a pacific band of teachers and
civilians, whose glorious privilege it
is to lift these brutalized people from
their low estate, substituting the
SPELLING BOOK and SLATE for the
wHIPPING-PosT and the LASH, thus
casting up highway for the progress
i've civilization of the now despised
and prosecuted race.
When the South shall be recon-
structed, and PEACE shall again wave
her olive branch over our tortured
country, when she shall come with her
myriad attendants to rebuild cur
despoiled and dismantled cities, and
to recultivate fields which have been
swept by the fiery torrent of war, then
will the equal humanity of these
hitherto antagonistie people, wholly |
disenthralled, and brought into frater-
nal and harmonious relationship with
IL