The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-09-14

the Abbe certainly was, an ineorrigible political
donkey. A community, too, might be COM
posed Of men as astute, dexterous, and unc-
tuous as any "wire-puller" who has ever
walked the streets of Albany, aud yet go to
pieces politically in the course Of q very few
years for want of any cohesive principle. The
political sense" is, in shert hequality, partly
moral, partly mental, which enables man TO
believe i'll the power of discussion to work for
distant results, and 10 be content for the pre-
sent with what he can get in default of what
be wants. man who rails against "talk'' in
politics; who loves the previous question:"
and who, when the vote goes against him.
goes home to pack up his trunk with view
TO emigration, or to load his pistol, or to dis
tribute arms amongst his friends, or form secret
associations, or who talks of 'pestilent doc
trines, " or who forces himself into company
where he is not wanted, or drags his neighbors'
children to school with his own against their
parents will in order to assert the doctrine of
human equality, is wanting in the political
sense, and if he has reached middle life is not
likely ever to acquire it.
That this sense has almost totally died out
at the South, and that it " i'll need some years
OF order and security to restore it, the occur
rences OF every week show more and more
clearly. The abstinence of the leading whites
from all participation in politics under the new
constitutions, thus permitting the government
to pass into the hands of those whom they de-
nominate as et-baggers, 3" "scallawags,"
and ignorant blacks, followed by incessant talk
OF appeals to arms, deputations to Washing
ton to apply for military protection, the forma-
tlon OF secret associations, the practice of
assassination as a political remedy, and the
issue of irritating denunciatory manifestoes
directed against the black population with
whom they have to live, and on whom they
are dependent for their prosperity, are all
striking proofs of the political imbecilty
brought on the Southern mind by the long
absence of an opposition. Men with the po-
litical sense in healthy condition would have
held on tenaciously to every scrap OF
power they could seize or retain, would, il
possible, never have let the negroes get from
under their influence, and, above all, would
never have allowed them to realize the possi-
bility that the State could be governed by
carpet baggers and ignOramuses. The expo
sures recently made by the Democratic Club
at Charleston of the com position of the South
CarOlinian Legislature under the new regime
are, even If true, simply consequences of their
own folly, aud, indeed, have striking resem-
blance, as pieces OF disqualification, to the
mani'estoes and declarations which the French
emlgreS used to issue from the bauks of the
Rhine against the vulgar French republicans.
A politician who sulks and sneers and refuses
to act, does not simply confess that he is
powerless, but that he is a fool. ..
The Ku-KluX Klan, let us add, is nothing
new. The Sonth before the war was one vast
hu-hluX klap: every man was a member of
the organization, and the State Governments
made no attempt to interfere with it, and its
victims were rare because dissenters frOm the
popular creed did not enter the South. What
makes 1t seem so novel now is that the State
Governments are in the hands of the dissent
ers and there is large body of them in every
State. But its operations are simply the ap-
IN hA mt Nf IL
Southern mode of repressing differences of
political opinion The great question of the
day to Southei ners is still the status and
rights of the negro and they bring to the con-
sideration of it their old practices. Ii man
gets up on the stump and breaches negro
equality, they do not get up ON another stump
and preach white superiority, and rely on time
and their own exertions to show that
his preaching was idle talk, but
they go home and take solemn
oath to keep an eye on the
orator, and if he does the like again to shoot
him or carry him into the woods and whip
HMM other words, about what the Monte
negrins would do if a preacher made his ap-
pearance amongst them to propagate Moham-
mechanism and eulogize the Turks. When
Forrest and others like him throw the blame
of the present state of things on the radicals,
they deceive either themselves or are trying to
deceive others. In the account he gave the
other day OF his plans and those of his asso-
ciates, to the correspondent of the Cincinnati
Commercial, he simply said that they were
going to adhere to the old Southern mode of
extirpating holders of disagreeable opinions;
and his threats seem alarming simply because
the holders OF disagreeable opinions now are
likely TO resist. Formerly, they never thought
of such thing. uf .'oluI lr
There can be no doubt that it is a misfor-
tune that some such disposition should not
have been made at the close of the war OF such
persons as Forrest, Toombs, and Cobb as
would have ensured their abstinence from
politics. After the report of the Congressional
Committee on the Fort Pillow massacre, the
release OF Forrest on parole was great scan
dal; even after his parole had been accepted,
II ought to have been returned to him by the
Government, and the alternative--exile, or
trial before military commission have been
offered to him. With regard to the others,
however much opposed we may bs to political
vengeance, there is nobody who will deny that
men who have made themselves conspicuous
III lnsugatlng an appeal from the ballot TO the
sword ought to be compelled, after defeat in
the field, to hold their tongues for the re-
mainder of their days. Civil war is too dread
ful thing to be tried by agitators unless they
really mean 1t TO be the last thing they will
e0er try; but the mild view taken of their per-
formances by the Northern public not un-
naturally causes the Southern leaders now to
treat the Rebellion as merely one of the legti-
mate means OF attaining political euds the
failure of which ought to entail no more in-
convenience on the vanquished than defeat at
an election. These men are now trying to be
as mlschievous as ever, and there is only one
remedy for their talk, and that is, the forcing
them to listen peaces.bly to other peoples talk.
This cannot be done in a year. but great