The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-04-15


other column, signed "No Candidate" ION
the relations between colored voters and con-
sentative employees, are extremely suggestive
and well deserve to be pondered. 1t would
be especially conducive to the improvement
Of the political situation if our colored popa-
lation could be impressed wildly with the
vital truth which underlies policy of amity,
of mutual confidence, and of active co-opera-
ton between them and the mass of the resi-
dent whites in the South In not single
point can politics touch the interest of the
Southern white man harmfully, unless they
similarly and equally touch the interest of
the Southern colored man. five, the whites
of the South, suffer by unwise, sectional and
malignant legislation on the part of Con-
gress, you, our colored countrymen, assuredly
can not, by any sort of arithmetic or any in
genuity of evasion, escape the same infiic-
ton. If commerce or agriculture, owing to
political causes, languishes for us, it lam
cuisines no less for you. If capital dries up
or take wings, if industry withers, and inn
poverishment spreads, and famine looms in a
hopeless future, your lot, even more inextri-
cably than ours, is involved in the imminent
ruin and desolation.
Carpet-baggery, put in possession of the
State and municipal governments by your
votes, would prove, to be sure, a terrible and
loathsome incubus upon our various inter-
ests and activities; but the long continuance
of its misrule, oppression and spoliation,
through your suffrages, would be positively
fatal in the end to your happiness and vel
fare. Depend upon this, for it is beyond the
possibility of refutation. 1t defes present
scrutiny. and experience can only make it
more and more clear. We desire you, for our
sake, to vote with us, or at least not to vote
against us and with our enemies. We repeat
frankly, that, for our sake, we earnestly wish
you to act thus. But we tell you, and tell
you truthfully, that, for your own sake, it
imperatively behooves you to make common
cause with us against the pestilent schemes
of those unprincipled adventures who aim to
use you as tools for striking US down that they
may plumber at discretion and leisure both
you and us. Follow them, and you divide the
Southern house against ITSELF Follow them,
and you give them precisely what they want
for carrying out their game of playing off one
part of the Southern population against an
other part, for the purpose of dominating
over both, and consuming the substance of
both. Believe us, we are not hostile to your
enjoyment of any right which it would beft
your present estate to possess. A convention
of South Carolina conservatives and Demo-
Gratis have just declared in favor of qualified
suffrage for colored people, to be adjusted ac-
oording to their manifested capabilities for
the intelligent, safe and useful ex-
ercise of political functions. This decla-
ration is indicative of a spirit pervading
the mass of Southern whites in other States,
but which can not display itself if colored
men in the South permit themselves to be
herded together by INSCRIPTIONS interlopers
as black mans party in express hostility to
the surrounding white population. We again
, assure you, colored men, that we are friendly
to all rights on your part which you are at
| present capable of using for your own advan-
tage, and friendly to every interest appertain.
| ing to your race in the actual situation, and to
every aspiration which it is now possible
for you to pursue to any wholesome result
| In this sense we are bound to be your friends.
We can not afford to be otherwise Cast as
our lot is with your lot in the same country
your true prosperity would be measure Of
ours, and ours of yours. But very differ
emit are the relations between you and the In
terloping carpet bsggers. They have no in
terest in common with you or with us. They
only value you as voters because they believe
that they can lead or drive you to the polls like
| flock of sheep. The more they delude you the
more they despise you. They have not thu
least faith in your qualification to vote. The,
come from the North, protesting to represen
the sentiments of the Republican party will
regard to the colored people. And yet the Re
publicans of Michigan have just voted dow
suffrage for colored people by thirty thousant
majority, and whenever the same proposition i
now brought before the people or the legisla
This is because the Northern people in gene
raj are dead set against political utilization
with colored men. Depend upon it, whel
the carpet-bag gentry profess to hav
none of the prejudice of their section in thi
respect, they are arrant hypocrites who seel
| apparent political utilization with you as
means of reducing you to real abject an
miserable subserviency. Stand by us, colore
men of the South, and we will stand by yol
faithfully and to the end Separate from us
join our enemies, and you viii hurt us greatly
perhaps fatally; but beyond all question O
peradventure you will go straight to you
own irretrievable ruin.
Democrats of Louisiana, look at Connect
cut Your friends in that gallant State hav