The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-02-11
SYMPTOMS OF A NEGRO EXODUS,

That time is destined to work in behalf Of
our people, is as certain as the incoming fu-
ture. This friend at least will not betray us.
In this physician we may safely confde that
at least he viii not delude US with the glozing
promises of charlatanism, or aggravate our
maladies with foul nostrums. Adversely
cannot SO deepen the gloom of the present
that no CLEANS of this consolation can bright
en-, warm and invigorate our hopes. The
South is not to be given up to jungle and to
African barbarism, although it may suit the
purposes of a desperate political faction to
put this unfortunate section in the train of
such a destiny. In the struggle in which the
white population are engaged the victory is to
the hopeful and patient As surely as the
heaven shall endure, and the earth shall not
fail them, they may live down the pernicious
effects of malevolence and misfortune which
are now combined against them. As certainly
as nature has made them a superior race, their
superiority, intellectual, moral and physical,
will tell in the final issue, and make these
States, which foul and unnatural conspiracy
aims to convert into an African base Of an
Asiatic despotism, awhile mans country, de-
dictated to civilization and progress, and not
to retrogression and ruin.
These views, the necessary conclusions from
indisputable priori premises, are confirmed
by accommodating facts of experience. Among
such facts let it suffice here to mention few
The negroes Of the South have manifested,
since they were emancipated, a rowing dispo-
sition and an inaptitude for settled life and
industry. They have, especially, shown no
eagemess to become landed proprietors with
permanent homes in the rich agricultural dis
tricts of the South. Their habits are such as
to 20 against their natural increase, as well as
against their acquisition and preservation Of
wealth. The freedmen's bureau, instead of
correcting, has tended to confirm these habits
1t has only debauchod and pauperized them.
1t has transferred the care of them from pri-
waite control to government tutelage, but not
the work which formerly paid for their sub
sistence. 1t will prove ultimately to have
been the most destructive Of all the engines
Of the spurious philanthropy to whose deadly
mercies the freedmen are doomed. The lying
statistics Of reconstruction registries and cleo
ton returns afford, Of course, no indication Of
the decrease or the exodus of the black popu-
lation. In estimating either the one or the
other, it is necessary at present to rely upon
ocular evidence, or upon unofficial testimony,
such, for example, as the subjoined statements
of a Mississippi paper the Aberdeen Ex-
aminer:
Il is with pleasure that we state that Missis
IL nj he hat
bed he convention 20 prevail at the late election.
Not train passes up the Mobile and Ohio Il all
road but bears many Of them 10 Tennessee and
Alabama, while We learn that they are leaving
the counties on the Mississippi river by every
steamer passing up to Missouri Illinois and the
other States OF the Great West. We wish the
departing blacks all possible prosperity in their
new homes, and congratulate our people on their
loss. Those who profess TO know informs US that
The decrease in Monroe since the middle of No
vember Is not less than three OF four hundred.
Well, We can spare as many more, and then have
as many left as We require.
Political power resolves itself at last into
the possession and use Of lands. Hence the
supreme importance, from political point of
view, that our Southern agriculturists should
stick to the country, cling to their homes, re-
solved to make living there, in spite of
gangs Of vagabonds and depredators with
which bureaucratic charity may cause their
neighborhoods to be infested. The wisdom
of this advice which the CRESCENT has often
heretofore taken occasion to give, is attested
by results wherever it has been followed.
Let the whites determine, by watchfulness,
by pluck, by mutual assistance, to make idle
wards Of the bureau pay dearly for their
stolen meat and bread, and the latter will
soon be forced to one of these alterna-
tives-honest work for living, or
emigration to where they hope to
find better chances for paupers and
pilferers There is no danger that, under the
policy above advised, Southern agriculture
will lose any laborers whose presence is de-
sirable. On the other hand, the more the
emigration on the part of the blacks, the
greater will be the inducements to white i'm
migration. Nothing could cause so great
rush Of whites from the North and from
Europe into the agricultural districts of the
South, as the news that the mass of the blacks
were leaving those districts. Well, this will
at length prove TO be- not mere hypothesis,
but history; and the South, having emerged
from the political and social perils that now
beset her, will possess at once the finest agri-
cultural domain on the face of the earth, and
a landed proprietary unsurpassed for indie
pendence and power anywhere or in any age.