Wilmington journal. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1844-1895, 1868-07-03
9. Forty Acres and q Mule"

So Forty Acres and a Mule
The State is about reconstructed ; the
Freedmen's Bureau is on its last legs ; the
Federal military will soon be entirely with
drawn from these States or confined to the
Government forts and arsenals; the verlest
adventurers and impostors fill all the offices
of honor ana profit in the South. In
word. North Carolina and her Southern
sisters are reconstructed upon orthodox
Radical principles. The negroes, with the
aid of few whites, have controlled every
thing to suit their own wishes. The vlr-
tue, intelligence and worth of the State
have been utterly ignored, and the dest1-
mes of North Carolina have been placed
under the management of strangers.
These men have imposed upon the credu-
lily of the colored race by aI7lndant promi-
ses of advantages, social, political and ma
terial Forty acres and a mule VAS
the smallest remuneration any, the most
modest, was to receive. The time has now
arrived when these promises to pay are
falling due. After her long journey, al
ways in sight of her destination, North
Carolina has arrived "home.' The poll
teal millennium promised by Radicals to
Southern negroes has come. And now for
the sequel.
The New York TriJune, the ableGt and
most influential Radical paper OF the
United States, says that when the Southern
States shall be reconstructed they will
need no Freedmen's Bureau, and few sol
diers, if any. It adds
"Root, hog or die - must then be the rule,
alike for individuals aud communities.
So, just in advance of the expected con-
summation of tie highly -colored promises
to Southern negroes by the wandering po-
litical Especial agents, the bank is closed
and the ominous suspended Payment"
meets the gaze OF the multitude who crowd
its portals with its well-thumbed obliga-
tions to pay. just when the colored peo-
pie, lulled to idieness by these expectations
and alienated from their friends by these
pleasant entertainments, are most in need of
the promised aid, their hopes
are mSlt6Q ultO lHGO tIliu arr
And left not rack behind"
La other words, the blacks are now told
that, having performed their allotted
task, they are thrown On their own resour-
ces and must work or starve. The Coy
eminent has no further use for them; their
new friends cannot support them in idle
ness, nor have they employment for them;
they have no right to expect special IA
vors from former friends, and now they
must look the disagreeable fact squarely in
the face that they must compete, under
some disadvantages, with more capable,
more intelligent and more enterprising
race. The blacks will soon find that in
every department of industry the opposi-
ton will prove stronger, month by month,
until soon the more profitable trades will
be filled by whites, and finally, in the most
mental occupations their sway will not be
uninterrupted. 1t will be utterly impossi-
BILE for these people, deprived of the good
will and sympathy Of the properly owners
and business men, to withstand the supe~
rior attainments of the whites and they
will then find how hollow is the pretended
friendship of the miserable pet-baggers
whose dupes they have become.
Change Coming.
A friend writing 81 Us from Powhatan,
Richmond county, N. c., sending us the
names of seven subscribers to the JOURNAL
for the campaign, remarks as follows
Six months ago it would hare been almost
miracle to have induced many Of the above 10
have souched anything conservative. All of them,
with one exception, went Radical, but their class
are beginning to that all promises not
made to be fulfilled, but merely bats for their
vote. SO [ hope the same feeling will continue
aud increase, that in the Fail North Carolina
will wipe out the stigma Of the late election by
polling a heavy Conservative majority for the
next President