The New Orleans crescent., 1868-12-03
THE FREEDMKN's ORGAN AND LIBERIAN
COLONIZATION,

The Tribune reminds us that we misstated
its meaning when we represented ii as saying
that negro colonists from this State, on going
to Liberia, would still be afflicted with carpet
baggery. What it really meant to say was
that the colonists themselves would be treated
as Sarpet-baggers by the Africans. We alto
gsther fail to see that this presents Libe-
rifi colonization in an unhattering or dis
ce5raging aspect for the freed people in the
Sputh. On the contrary, if the freedmen
eshsgrants are to receive at the hands of ne
grosss in Africa the treatment received by the
white caIpet-baggers at the hands of negroes
in sthis and other States, their position in
Africa could not be otherwise than felicitous
anS enyiable. For how have these white carpet
baigers Jared when committing their political
ana private fortunes to the decision of South
en- freedmen? They have reveled, they have
ws,Ilowed, in the fruits of generosity as con-
fdtng and unstinted as it was undeserved and
mifdirected. They came empty and fawning,
ap$ they have been filled to degree of
bIsltei insolence without example in the
hiEiory of licentious adventure. They
ca,ae as hungry as the lean kline
offs Egypt, and they were welcomed
by: black hands and voices to partake at
wi. of the cream of Southern wealth and in
dustry, to monopolize everything savory,
evsrything sumptuous, which they could get
into their capacious maws or rapacious
clutches. 1t is true that the class of freed
mfn represented by the Tribune have learned,
by the bitter logic of experience, that the
vcfacity of this swarm of carpet-baggers has
preyed upon, and is still preying upon, the
collmon substance of blacks and whites. But
it is too late to get back the lost. They will
no, disgorge. You might as well demand of
ffmine to restore plenty, of the pestilence to
revive its victims, of the grave to give up its
dead, as to expect that carpet-baggery will
surrender its plunder and adopt policy of
benefcence in place of policy of spoliation.
New, the most sanguine and energetic of
those, be they black or white, who have been
feeced by carpet-bag shears, will be fortunate
if hey can repair the damage under the pre-
sent condition of affairs. For variety of rea-
sons, the blacks in this regard are more poorly
off than the whites. The bulk of them
will continue, for this generation at least, to
be population among which the vilest class
of demagogues and political spectators, of
the carpet-bag, scalawag, or some other stripe,
will look for dupes and victims.
But, if the Tribune is right in supposing
that freedmen emigrants would not be ex-
posed to the pest Of carpet-baggers in Liberia,
but might stand in the position of carpet
basgers to the native Africans, they would
enjoy immunity from the train of troubles
and drawbacks which extends before their
race in this country, and be favored, besides,
with advantages that would render them
superior to their race in any part of Africa
It does not follow that they would abuse their
superiority in knowledge, in skill, in oppor-
fnnity, over the native Africans, as the white
carpet-baggers have abused their superiority
in these respects over the Southern blacks.
Bnt there would be plenty of ways by which
they might use these means to their profit in
Point of substantial wealth and social or
political advancement, without initiating the
rascally trickery of the white carpet-baggers
Hence. we may accept with degree of re-
sefved doubt the assertion Of the Tribune that
tl@ apostles of colonization will find scarcely
a disciple in Louisiana, and that American
citizens of African descent have no cause
whatever to induce them to look to Africa
even with speculative hope or in the spirit
Of; conjectural enterprise.