Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1868-11-04
MR. ADAMs-wORDs OF SOUND AD-
WIFE

~ y - ~ AA1AAso INV A6bAOAioA |
epute, who cannot be claimed by either
arty, whose recent speeches it would
e well for the throne itself and the
owers behind and around it to read and
'onder well-Mr. John Quincy Adams.
At Albany on Saturday last he de-
ivered speech of great force in
which occurs the following candid and
truthful description of the condition Of
he Southern States under Radical policy,
md prediction of the consequences to
which it will lead. A Southern journal
can have no merely political motive now
in calling the attention of those in author
ity to this subject. Mr.. Adams has
told well and clearly the facts. Let
them, in the name Of peace and for the
sake of every interest we hold dear as a
people, be needed in time:
! pray you, my fellow citizens, not to
fasten such an odious, such fatal, such
narrow, mean, and unstateSmanllke policy
upon us. Who ever heard OF free
people treated as these hateful. Jaws treat
the South, and which were pac;fed or
concilliated by such dealings? Point
me, if you can, to any people that ever
were reconciled to such a subsection by
a lapse of time. Mr.. Sumner talks OF
thirty years of this yassalage to the
North and the negro as fitting term OF
the probation for the South. | tell you
that you may hold the people down by
the reconstruction laws and like unto
them for fifty years, and you will only
find that you have bred up generations
of sons and grandsonds of the men you
have to deal with to-day, to whose set
tied sense Of resentment and indurated
sentiment of hate, the soreness and irrita-
ton of this hour will be as moonlight
unto sunlight, and as water unto wine"
But you never can do 1t. me
American people never will suffer
it. They are weary, and SICK
and ashamed of it now; and if you
do not reverse this suicidal policy IN this
election, you cannot maintain it long.
Unless the South is Immediately guilty
of some intolerable blunder, a reaction
must soon set in which will sweep away
this ugly anomaly upon a free policy.
Then | dread the violence Of the flood +,
which will be wilder and fiercer for
every day the waters are pent up. DO
any Of you feel an interest in the fate OF
the negro? / confess l do, and a very
great sympathy and compassion for him.
He is not at all in fault for any part of
this distressing complication yet these
reconstruction laws are forcing him into
fatal position. They tend, by fnevi-
table law, to array him on the one hand
and the white man on the other. 1t may
not, l do not think it will, result in a
war ofraces. Thus far l found no unkind-
ness or i'll blood. But these laws are sure
ly dividing these people, whose true inter-
ests are Identical, into suspicious and dis
truStful neighbors. Now, the time must
come, sooner or later when the negro
must be set down out of the arms Of the
United States, when the people will
weary coddling him with their children's
bread, and he must make his own unas-
sisted way, just as America teaches her
own and her adopted children the only
path to independence and self-support.
And then, with the dominant race, the
race that always must rule this CONT
nent, arrayed against them, how are
these unfortunate people to maintain
themselves? The Republicans have
bolstered the negro up where he
does not naturally belong. They
have forced him into q fictitious
and transient Importance. They
are turning against him his only sure re-
lance. They are distorting and re-
versing his relations with the great cur
rent Of national life, and on their heads
will rest the suffering and misery Of his
reconciliation with destiny. Day by day
his case becomes more difficult and more
dangerous. Cling to his path long
enough, and there is nothing for it but
the precipice for him. Then let us look
calmly and fairly at the chance Of re-
storing material well-being aud indus
trial activity to the South under this
system. Some Of our sanguine friends
assure us that General Grants election
will be the signal for some magical change
in the moral and physical elements of the
situation that trade will unite, agricul-
ture will spring up, and hope return, as
by the wave Of an enchantreSs' wand.
am sure | wish | could feel this con-
fidence. would consent, if l could be
sure Of this, to be cheerfully beaten every
time | was a candidate for any office from
this day to my dying day. But l ask
any Of you to 90 down into that country
and tell me how it can be done. The
freedmen, with a mistaken ifwell mean
ing kindness, are being educated into
vagrant paupers by indiScriminate gov
eminent aims giving, too say nothing OF
lazy whites who are not to proud to live
On ratiOns. The negro, necessarily per-
turbed by his altered lot, is encouraged
in his congenial idleness and native
and acquired improvidence by con-
sciousness OF a refuge from his own
thrittlessness. His head, always swim
ming with strong novelties and fantastic
anticipations, will be fairly turned by an
event which he will look upon as an alb"
solute guarantee Of his perRancnt do
minion in all that land. He looks to en-
ter in and occupy the land and live, like
General Sheridan's Sea Island negroes,
in q barbarian paradise Of his own, where
he and his may lie altogether in the sun
shine, careless Of mankind The land
owners and capitalists see this, and they
do not dare to enter upon any considera-
BILE undertaking. DO you suppose it is
from any serious ventures Do you
think they would refuse the profits ofthe
successful planter Not they; but they
sec that rational relations Of labor and
capital are exceedingly unstable so long
a.. the natural order Of political affairs is
reversed. Now, it is childish to suppose
that the inertneSs, dependency, poverty,
and diSorganizatiOn Of all the process Of
thought and action at the South affects
these people alone. The vast sums you
pay to preserve an unnatural order, a
position Of unstable equilibrium there,
arc the least part Of thee expense of re-
construction. Encouragement and sloth
in people cost more than armies
Y es my friends, cost you more than you
can guess. The paralysis Of the South is
creeping up day by day, and must sooner
or later, under Radical treatment, per-
wade one half your whole body. And |
do you think the health and vigor of the
side, as yet unassailed, will be unim-
paired ? | do not think it. | do not |
believe that we can hope for any genu-
inc prosperity and wholesome growth |
until cheerfulness, confidence and hope
take the place Of gloom, apprehension
and fear. But, say our friends, what
will Knu do 2 Mint IS vnnr remndv