The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-09-14
The Ku-KIux Khan in tennessee.

A NOTICEABLE feature OF the petition or address
of the Committee of the Legislature OF Ten
nessee, asking from the President military aid
to maintain the peace, is the statement that
the enmity of the Ku-Klux Klsn is mostly
directed against the negroes, Of whom many
who were employed on plantations for year,
with the understanding that they should get
apart of the crop, are now forced to flee foe
their lives, leaving the result of their labors
behind them For downright meanness, com
mend us to the Southern chivalry. No other
race of men are capable OF cruelty and base
ness equal to that they are practising at this
moment in the South. Claiming that their con-
stitutional rights are invaded, and that they
seek only to maintain the ascendency Of
superior race, the practical commentary upon
their professions is the ever-recurring proof
that the object they have nearest at heart is to
cheat the freedman out Of his hard earned
wages and to continue to sustain their worth
less lives of idleness, debauchery, and crime
on the proceeds of unrequited toll. The pirates
and robbers who openly prey upon mankind,
are not more infamous than the murderous
Ku-Klux villains, who systematically cheat,
by terrorism, the laborer out of
his just hire. The evil unfortunately
does not end with the first acts
of injustice. False as the accusation that the
freedman will not work under fres-labor
system has proved, they can scarcely be ex-
peoted to evince much industry after they
have been repeatedly robbed of their earnings.
The Rebel midnight assassins injure not only
the freedmen; they strike fatal blow at the
prosperity of their own neighborhoods and
States, and diminish the productive power OF
the nation. They also provoke bloody retri-
BUTTON they create the only real danger of the
sanguinary war of races they are constantly
predicting and they obstruct the restoration
of order and peace. These unmitigated viii
lains are to man advocates of Seymour and
Blair. They would regard the election of the
Democratic candidates as the signal for an
open restoration of Rebel rule and Rebel
regime in every Southern State, and in every
ramifcation of Southern society. They deny
that they intend to restore slavery-but there
can be no worse slavery than that they are
seeking to establish by their Ku-Klux-Klans.
They allege that they desire only the restora-
tion of their Constitutional rights-and they
meanwhile prove that now, as in their past
history, their real purpose is to trample upon
every natural and legal right of a down-trod-
den race and to rule or ruin the patient and
patriotic people of the North.
GENERAL J. R. CHALMERS, of Tennessee,
"formerly in the Confederate Service" as the
New York World naively puts it, has been
talking to Mr.. Seymour's "friends" in that
city. This man Chalmers, who is still, if we
are not mistaken, a paroled prisoner of war
closed his address in advocacy of Seymour and
Blair with the following words:-
"When I hear Southern man cry loyalty
methinks snuff treason in the tainted gale.
When hear Northern man cry loyalty me-
thinks hear the bugle blast of the robber
band" 5000
Just so. Loyalty in the South, to the sup
porters of the Tammany candidates, means
treason of the most heinous sort. For the
leaders of the Rebellion and their nefarious
crime of attempting to subvert the Govern
ment, there is now no word of reproach,
naught but the most cordial greetings, the
most lavish encomiums, the most abject SER
Witty. But as soon as man breathes pro
fession of loyalty south Of the Potomac and
ln0 OnlO, % u6 WulI6 Or Dlach, no i5 sutu
n arily branded as traitor and bounded
down by every conception Of dia-
tolical ingenuity. Even here in our very
midst the situation is but little better. So
| long as modern Democracy chooses to be in
terpreted at the North by unrepentant Rebels,
the word loyalty is made synonymous with
downright rascality, and the party which
saved the nation from destruction is openly
arraigned for all the crimes in the pro-slavery
calendar. Loyalty as a principle of merit
has become extinct, to the Democratic
mind. "Reverence and regard for the Union"
are now the words, and Lee, Beauregard,
Hampton and Forrest are representative
men, il. their professions OF devotion to the
Government, by whose unwise leniency they
are permitted to come and 80 in peace, with
the most infamous and reasonable rantings
falling from their lips. This is what comes
from "making treason odious" after the John
son system. Vote for Seymour and Blair,
and you will strengthen the cause which, sup
posed to be lost one, yet retains sufficient
vitality to proclaim in a Northern city that
loyalty at the South is treason and at the
North highway robbery
The TERRIBLE EARTHoUAKE on the Pacific
coast of South America, of which We present q
full account to-day, was perhaps the most