Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1868-05-09
From the New York Tribune.
Somebody's got to Leave

Nomouuuy So1 w ho@'0'
1t is stated by number of newspa-
pers that some philosopher of African
descent in that rather broad locality
known as "down South" recently ex
pressed his views of the situation as fol-
lows; ''De darkies is gittin' dissatisfied.
"De fac is, we're beglnnin' to tink dere
is too many kinds of people here. Dere
is de Whites, an de Blacks, an de Yam
KEGS. OATS too many to get along well,
and somebody's got to leave" The
views OF this chronological freedmen, we
preceive, are regarded as exceedingly
novel, and somewhat ridiculous: but
batirg z the lingo in which they are ex-
pressed, they seem to us to be precisely
similar to the avowed and tenaciouSly
defended opinions of several light-color-
Ell stages who profess to have mastered
all the greatest questions of social sci
ence, and to have arrived at precisely
the colored mans conclusion. Years
ago, the prof sct of Colonization was star
ted upon exactly the theory that "some-
body must leave" it being assumed that
the "some body" was black. Then, af-
ter the termination Of the Rebellion, Il
great number of Whites being in dis
satisfied and unsettled frame of mind,
declared that they must leave and go
to Brazil or Mexico, or some other far
distant and alien shore. 1t does not ap-
pear to us to be at all extraordinary
when so many Caucasians are declaring
that they cannot live with ''niggers,' D
that here and there all individual African
should be found proclaiming that he can
not possibly live with Caucasians. Now,
unless a remedy can be found for the
discomfort and dissension which alone
can account for this passion for leaving
it is pretty clear that, sooner or later,
somebody must emigrate. Shall it be
the Blacks or the v hites ? Shall it be
the majority or the minority ? Shall it
be the Oppressed or the Oppressors I?
Shall it be the Workers or the Loafers :?
Shall it be the Producers or the Nom
Producers ? Which can the South, if it
would recall its ancient prosperity, spare
best, the tillers of the soil, the culliva-
tors of cotton, rice, corn, sugar, and to-
bacco, or the men who hang about tay-
erns, who con. iler labor to be degrading,
but who do not consider it to he degra-
ding to subsist upon the unrcquited in
dustry of others ?-the men who are
ready to devote themselves to daily,
cheerful industry, or those who are best
pleased to pass their time in smoking,
drinking, hOrSeracing, and the discussion
of politics ? We will suppose by way of
illustration, something which is really
impossible, i. e., that all. the Blacks in
the S outhern States have cleft and that
only the White population remains.
Who, then, will do the work 1t may
be answered that there will then be an
influx of White laborers ? But what has
been gained, unless the change has made
labor respectable, or, more accurately
speaking genteeI.? You will merely have
substituted White pariahs for Black pa
riahs-the old, original blue blood will be
quite as lazy, greedy, and unproductive,
quite as hauty and intolerant, quite as
unreasonable and domineering as ever :;
so, that, in a few years, you will have a
repetition of the cry that Somebody
must leave" Nothing will satisfy these
pauperized arsitocrats except restora-
ton of the old and unnatural relations,
by the virtue, or, rather, by the vice of
which the non-worker appropriates the
workers wages. That is what they
want, and that is precisely what, Il rough
no possible concatenation of changes,
can they haYe in the new and regenera-
ted South. This being the fact, the
sooner they leave the better for their re-
spectiye localities, and the worse for the
lands toawrd which they may turn their
faces.
The truth is, what we mainly want in
reconstructing Southern society is time
and patience. 1t an absurdity surpass-
ing the absurdity of childhood, to ex
pect a country SCARED and desolated BY
civil war, and affected by great social
changes, to blossom instantly like the
rose, and to advaneesin a moment to the
nights of productive prosperity. Most
Of the trouble at the South, it is evident
is created by class small in numbers,
and which must, i'll the nature of things,
rapidly disappear, partly because it has
lost and never can recover its old artif-
cial position, and partly because it is cut
off from the possibility of recuperation
by its own faults, habits, and vices. We
do not expect men of this debased char
acter ever to consider the Blacks as any
thing but nuisance, aud, in turn, the
Blacks will necessarily regard the thrift
less and hauhgty Whites as their natural
enemies. But all this is of to-day. All
this is the resnlt Of "a struggle for life or
death between doomed aristocracy and
a democracy just rising to a sense of its
natural rights. There will be no trouble;
when equiety has become familiar, and
general JUSTICE between man and man
has@mhde toll sweet and labor' pleasant
op1 boDo,ol1o