The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1868-04-07
AddreBscs 20 tho People OF South Caro-
= ;'tfNS,t,a. 80 4 hna. lSt' i''

tits useless to deny that the country
is in o sad land most deplorable condi-
tion. Poverty and want are broad
cast over the land. Where formerly
was the abode of wealth, refinement
and generous hospitality, there is
now want, starvation and wtetched-
ness-industry has given place to
idlencss and vice with many of our
people. To a considerable extent
peace, security and protection have
been superseded by violence and
crime. We have been robbed of all
civil, constitutional and political
rights, and placed under military
despotism, as absolute aud perfect as
Asiatic tyranny conld have made it,
The life, liberty and property Of
every man, woman and child, in the
Southern States, is held at the mercy
of military satraps. Military COM
missions and drum-head courts mar
tial have been everywhere substitnt-
ed for the trial by jury.
And worse than all this, we are
menaced with negro rnle and supre-
macy, at the point Of the sword and
bayonet. Sixty odd negroes, many
of them ignorant and depraved, to-
gether with fifty white men, outcasts
OF Northern society, and Southern
renegades, betrnyers of their race
and country, have assembled in Con-
vention and framed Constitution
for the government of South Caro-
lima. This Constitution declares and
proclaims that every male negro,
over tho age of twenty-one, whether
pauper or II convict felon, shall
exercise the right of suffrage, whilst
every white man, who has heretofore
filled any official station, and who
sympathized with his bleeding coun-
try i'll her struggle for self-govern-
ment, is forever disfranchised, and
incapable of voting or holding Office.
In the language of the immortal
Declaration of American Independ-
ence, "the history of the present"
Congress. ''is a history of repeated
injuries and usurpations, all having
in direct object the establishment of
an absolute tyranny over these States.
To prove this, let facts be snb1 fitted
to candid world"
"They have refused laws the most
wholesome and necessary for the pub
lie good;" "they have dissolved rep
resentative houses repeatedly, for
opposing with manly frmness their
invasion on the rights of the people,"
"they have obstructed the admins
tration of justice" and displaced our
judges; "they have erected multi
tude of now Offices, and sent hither
swarms of officers to harass our peo-
pie and eat out their substance;"
they have kept among us, in times
of peace, standing armies, without
the consent of our Legislatures"
they have affected to render the
military Independent of and superior
to the civil power" "they have COM
bined" with our former slaves sto
subject lis to jurisdiction foreign to
our Constitution and unaclnowlcdged
by our laws, giving their assent to
these Acts of pretended legislation;"
for quartering large bodies of armed
troops among us; for protecting
them by mock trial from punish
mcnt for any murders which they
should commit on the Inhabitants of
these States; for imposing taxes on
us without our consent" and with
ont representation; "for depriving
rs in many cases of the benefits of
trial by jury; for abolishing the free
system Of English laws in all these"
Southern Observation-Disclosures there
in an arbitrary government, and en-
larging its boundaries, so rs to render
1t at once an example and fit instru-
ment for introducing the same abso-
lutte rule" in the Northern States; "for
taking away our Constitutions, abo-
fishing our most valuable laws, and
altering fundamentally the fofms of
L..